Spook
by odinnsmeyjar
Summary: Chronicles the endless nights of a girl in Slam
1. Chapter One

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

The slam was a harsh bitch, she decided, peering into the near pitchy darkness outside her rabbit hole. She kept the small chamber brightly lit with whatever she could steal when the guards weren't looking. That way the walking ghosts out there couldn't get her easily. On her belly in the air shaft, fingers touching the grate to the outside hell, she listened intently for the quiet footfalls that would herald one of the few who knew her rabbit hole was nearby. 

Maybe today she'd be all right... Maybe tonight they'd miss her and she'd be able to get some food. Tonight? Today? She shook her head. Eternal night, with scant refuges of dim light. 

Women in this pit of hell were rare, and the few that were able to survive generally had managed to get a protector to whore themselves to. The few who didn't find protectors usually died tragically and painfully. Often the ones with protectors did the same, bleeding out in a filthy corner or in the icy water of the showers, a shiv in their ribs. She nervously touched the place on her leg, then at her armpit where her two shivs, liberated from the bodies of men who would no longer need them, lay concealed. Then to the small pouch on her wrist, sewn with her own hands, wherein lay hidden precious matches, sacred light. 

Behind her was safety, her 3 books, her refuge of the damned. Before her was the lurking darkness with its prowling horrors, shivs in the dark, but food. Her ears heard nothing. She carefully pulled in the grate, then crawled forward, hooking the grate back into place. Nearby were the sounds of another pack fight, where the roving gangs of prisoners fought one another over something pointless. The guards, as well she knew, only stepped in if either a supervisor was nearby or if they had vested interest in one of the fighters. Well, at least she knew where not to be right then. Pressed close to the wall, she slunk away from the sounds of the ructions. 

The inky corridors were a horrid maze, but her feet found their path with the deft tread of habit. That was a good sign that she needed to find a new rabbit hole. A pity, that. The current hole had everything she could want- the entrance was tight enough that most of her tormentors couldn't enter, while the double grates and the bend in the narrow crawlway kept her light from being seen. Maybe if she simply took other routes to and from her haven she wouldn't have to move... But she knew in the pit of her terrified stomach that she had to go. 

Far ahead she could see the barest trace of light- the mess, where she could get food, and wolf down what little she could before the larger prisoners noticed her. She could hear the arguing and the angry growling of the guards. She blinked as she entered the light. The handful of guards stood next to the trough, their shock sticks in their hands. Beside the door was a stack of more or less clean bowls, and she reached for one, cradling the cold metal in her long hands. On of the guards spotted her, leering. His comrade, beside him at the trough shook his head, murmuring and pointing to her. She knew. It was why she was there, and it was stigmata that the guards either were revolted by or completely the opposite. 

They were staring at the collar about her throat. 

It was a plain circlet of round steel colored metal, with a thick thumbprint lock on the back. It was keyed in to the thumbprints of the guards so that in the case of her death they could remove the expensive piece of equipment. It was a brand to those who knew. It marked her to the guards as a freak, as a dangerous animal that had to be watched. It marked her to the guards as Psi. It was an Inhibitor. It made her just like any other piece of gutter trash in the slam. 

She silently collected her bowl of what the prison system called food, then slunk away to a nearby space against the wall to eat the tasteless gruel. It was amazing, she reflected, how after a year in a place like this you stopped looking at what you ate. After two, you even stopped tasting it. Once the gruel had had a flavor, and she recalled that it was noxious, but survival meant ignoring it, and that was what her body did. She was even able to scour her bowl clean with her fingers, licking the last from their tips uninterrupted. It might not be such a bad day after all. 

The darkness outside had been held at bay too long, and it engulfed her with malign hunger as soon as she stepped out of the door of the mess. Behind, trailing in what they thought was silence, she heard 3 men. Then 5. Her pace quickened, and she heard one of them swear softly. He had tripped in the dark. So one of them was as blind as her. She didn't dare look behind yet. Her pace quickened again. She was getting a little lead. Now she could glance behind her. 3 pairs of quicksilver pools reflected back at her. 

Then she stopped. 

And fell. 

Another pair of the eerie glows looked down from above her, the eyes of whoever she'd run into. She heard the other group stop, and they began to growl, posture, threaten in the dark. She slowly reached for her wrist pouch, bringing her hands up towards her chest in a fearful motion. All around her she could smell the reek of her pursuers, the earthy smell of the man whose feet she cowered near, the dust of the passage floor. Her fingers closed on a match, and she lowered that hand to the cement floor. The man above her snorted, and she glanced up. His eyes were on her briefly, then she saw the tiniest glint in the non-existent light, a vicious curved metal shiv held parallel to the floor above her. She heard the other men draw, heard them swear, threaten. Heard a name as her hand flew against the floor. 

The match flared bright. Her feet were under her and she flew away, her pursuers cursing, blinded. The match lay on the floor behind her, and she peeked under her arm as she ran. The shiv above her had shielded the other's face, and she stole a quick sight of warm toned skin taut over rippling muscles as he lunged, his foot extinguishing the match. 


	2. Chapter Two

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other 

Her new hole wasn't quite as nice as the old one, but she had managed to get almost everything into it in only a few near tragedies. And she had found a guard washroom in her searching for the new hole, one they didn't use on account of the electricity being out and so a lack of light. The guard barracks was nearby, so the other inmates avoided it. 

She kept a heavy crate against the "door" of the new rabbit hole; the passage in was larger, but the crate kept both light in and intruders out, and she would hear them when they did try to get in with plenty time to grab a shiv. There was also the addition of a bolt to the outside grate, but she had only a small amount of faith in its ability to hold against a determined intruder. Her books were carefully stacked next to the minicells for the torch and the pile of blankets, cleaned in the abandoned washroom, that served her as a bed. 

The nice thing was that it was almost safe. 

The assailants who had tried to corner hadn't been heard from since, and that corridor reeked of blood and death- She now avoided it. Her strange savior, for she felt he had indeed saved her, had not reared his head again. However, the guard from the mess had taken to finding her when she ventured into the slam at large, and he had enlisted a pack of thugs to round her up if they saw her. They had, once or twice. She shuddered, thinking about her near miss. Both times she had been delivered to the guard, she knew his name now as Talbot, and both times something had interfered with whatever he had planned. The first time a riot had broken out. The second his commanding officer had entered, interrupting him, and she'd made her escape. 

Now, though, she was contented to lay on her nest of slightly damp blankets and remember. 

_The afternoon was chill, and leaves swirled around her, caught in the wind's soft hands. The sun was warm, golden through the trees. Mum and Dad had something they wanted to tell her- they had said so over the comm, so Kiran hurried home. _

There were strange hovers in front of the house, big, new looking ones, so they must have company. Kiran wondered what they could want to say to her in front of company. Had she done well on her testing and the visitors wanted to hire her straight out of school? She ran up the steps, setting her pack on the bench near the door. 

"Mum, Dad, I'm home!" 

She could hear them moving and talking in the other room, her mother's polite, but strained laugh. Her father greeted her at the door to the sitting room, guiding her in with a flourish. 

"This is Kiran, our daughter, gentlemen." 

"Not much to look at, is she?" piped up the younger man, a man in a dark uniform. "Not what I figured she'd look like." 

"Are you sure she's gifted?" The older man looked her up and down, raising an eyebrow. 

"Oh yes, gentlemen. We're certain! I assume you'll want to take her for testing before we work out the particulars of her employment?" Her mother stared in shock at Kiran's father, but his eyes were on the strange men. 

"Dad, what's going on?" 

Noise, shouting, the falls of many booted feet echoed down the short passage to her haven, and she extinguished the torch, pulling the crate aside, crawling along the tunnel. Through the grate she could dimly see boots as men ran by, but there were no uniform legs. Prisoners. She heard their voices as she started backward. A name. A name she recognized. A name she had only heard once. The name sworn by her pursuers before she changed hideaways. 

Riddick. 

She rushed out of the passage as soon as the hall was clear, pulling the grate back hastily and bolting after the last group. She heard their boots ahead. Then, slowly, the sound of fighting. Her feet hit the floor hard as she ran, the thump of the boots lost in the roar of the crowd in a room filled with a single gang and pale blue light. 

The gang had ringed a man; she could see his shaved head above the circle. The gang shouted, roared, cursed at the man. The man who stood calm, his shining eyes staring coldly around at them. The pack leader pushed a man from his gang into the center with her savior, a man nearly as tall as the one she was here for. With a nervous glance, the new man pulled his shiv, circling warily. 

Riddick didn't move. 

She crept closer, peering between rough bodies. The fight was not much of a contest as she saw it. The man, now pouring his blood from a torn throat, never had a chance- the huge form of the one called Riddick hadn't even seemed to move, but there he was, now in a crouch. Thick, visceral red dripped from the cold gleam of his shiv. 

With a howl the gang leapt as one. She cried out softly as he disappeared beneath the press of bodies. She felt the wall at her back. The cement and metal was cold, and it threatened to bite her hands and arms as she slid herself along it out of the room. 

And she ran. She ran away from the horrid scene. She ran blindly down the halls, through passages she dimly recognized, until she crumpled to the ground. The image of the man who had saved her, of his body borne down beneath the weight of the gang burned behind her eyelids. My fault, her mind screamed. Why didn't I do something. 

A boot crunched on the cement and dirt near her. Someone leaned heavily against the wall with a grunt. The smell of earth and blood was strong, and she could smell sweat. The breathing was heavy. She looked up, and her blurry vision recognized twin pools of quicksilver. She peered in the dim light. 

"It is you." Her voice was another shadow in the passage, but the eyes rapidly fixed on her. She heard him inhale sharply through his nose. She rose, reaching her hand towards him, touching his arm. "Follow me." She moved a step away, to where her fingers barely contacted his skin, then turned back. "Please. They'll be here soon." And she moved slowly through the dark, hearing his silent step behind her. 

There was only one safe place. She was leading him there. 

To her haven. 

She pushed the grate in, then pointed to him. The man paused for a moment, then lowered himself to the floor to pull himself along on his belly. She crawled in after him, sliding the grate into place. Then the footsteps of his pursuers echoed to her ears. Their boots thumped along, pausing a short distance away. She slid the bolts of the grate into place, then rushed down to the hole, throwing herself around the crate at the end, sliding it into place. Her hand reached for the torch, but hit hot flesh instead. Muscle rippled beneath her fingers, and she yanked her hand back, gasping softly in fear. 

"Nice hidey-hole, rabbit." His voice was harsh, deep, cruel. Then the light flared, backlighting the hulking man against the feeble glow of the torch. "I assume you were reaching for this." She nodded. In response he did something terrifying. 

He smiled. 

It was not a pleasant expression on him; his eyes lit up with an inner glow that did not appear altogether natural, or sane. His white teeth flashed in the low light. 

He took the opportunity, with her wide eyed and backed against the wall, to study her. The eyes were near black, slightly slanted beneath thick brows. Her face was thin, with a haunted look, a rounded jaw that came to a slightly pointed chin, soft cheekbones, all framed by dark hair that fell over one shoulder in a loose, short braid. She was not a large girl, nor was she small. 

"You're the girl with the match, aren't you, rabbit?" 

And she stared at him. He was larger than she remembered, with broad shoulders and taut muscles sliding under richly golden skin, but if the color was from the torchlight or his skin she couldn't tell. He was easily twice as broad as she. He had nearly a foot of height on her, and who knew how many pounds. 

She somehow managed to nod, her eyes fixed on his. "You- you stopped those men..." 

"Ah, the rabbit has a voice." He tilted his head, looking at her. She swallowed, her eyes breaking contact to flit to the sides of the room, to the crate, to her bed behind him. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, staring up at him. "I need to rest, rabbit. Move to the side." He stood, moving to the corner by where she huddled, sinking with his back to the wall. She scrambled onto her blankets, still staring at him with wide eyes. He lowered his brows against the torchlight, pulling off his slashed shirt to peer at the slice across his side. "Is that tunnel secure, rabbit?" 

She nodded. "I b-bolted it myself. We'll hear if anyone tries to enter." She shifted. "I have a medkit... If you need it..." She moved the three books to lift the small metal case, offering it to him, biting her lower lip, staring with wide eyes. 

He paused for a moment, then reached out one long hand to take the kit. She shrank back again as soon as he had it. "At the moment, rabbit, I owe you. Stop cringing." He pulled the lengths of thread and needles, popping them out of their sterile packages, and began to stitch up the long cut in his side. "Just gunna patch myself up and wait for things to die down." 

She nodded, shifted, blinked, then shifted around again. She pulled one of the blankets off her little nest. "Here. It gets cold in here." Again, she snatched her hands back as soon as he had it. 

He reached for the books, his hands dwarfing them, opening the tattered, worn covers. The Art of War. The Oddessy. Beyond Good and Evil. All well worn, with tattered pages, yellowed by time and the torchlight. 

Glancing up, he watched her curl up into the remaining blanket, completely covering her small form. Her eyes glinted through a small gap in the blankets, then even that stopped. He opened the book most worn. Beyond Good and Evil. 


	3. Chapter Three

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

He didn't like it, sitting in the cramped space of this hole. The light from the torch echoed in a peculiar way, an eerie way that wasn't right. Sounds were either muffled or amplified. The walls loomed close around him, and the chill in the air seemed to flow in, but not from anywhere he could identify. The book he had been fitfully thumbing through returned to the pile, and his large hand reached out to the torch. The light disappeared. 

With a cry, the blanketed bundle exploded. The girl was scrambling for the light, her hands shaking as she lit it, eyes wide, breath rapid. She fixed her stare on him, still holding the torch in her hands, shrinking away from him. He simply raised his hand to shield the light. 

"Thought you were asleep, rabbit." 

She only nodded, still clutching the light to her. 

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?" He almost smiled when the quip earned him what she obviously felt passed for a fierce look. "Poor rabbit." He glanced around the hole again. 

"There's no way out but the one." Her voice trembled. "That's what you're looking for, right?" 

His shined eyes stared at her, boring into her, looking through her. He tilted his shaved head. He cleared his throat. He let his gaze wander to the crate, to the opening it hid, then around the small room. 

She shook herself out of the blankets, extinguished the torch, moved the crate. On hands and knees she entered the shaft. 

"Going to see if it's clear," was all she said before slipping away. 

_You're getting stupid, girl,_ she berated herself, feeling the cold tunnel around her, carefully placing one hand in front of the other, sliding forward one knee, then the other. Killers outside her hole, killers inside her hole, maybe she was suddenly acting on some hidden urge to kill herself. That brought her up short, halfway down the tunnel. Not a good thought. Shaking her head, she pressed on, willing her senses and attention to their fullest. 

Something wasn't right. 

The grate was slightly bent. Not opened, but someone had tried, and tried fairly well. 

She crept forward another few inches, willing her breath quiet, her hands silent. Inch by inch she carefully moved ahead. Close to the grate, she inhaled through her nose as quietly as she could. 

Dust. Rock. Cement. Metal. The smell of faint blood, the scent of sweat. Boot leather. She closed her eyes in the dark. She listened. The soft sigh of the air through the shaft, through the corridor. The breathing of the Slam. The soft shift of someone too long on their feet. 

Hands, feet moved backwards, silent as she could be, she crept back. She held her breath, counting the distance until her foot brushed the crate. Around the crate, what had been safety, now house to one of the men from Slam. He pulled the crate across the opening before she had a chance, his eyes glinting their cold light in the inky night of the hidey-hole. She reached for the torch, turning it on low. 

"Well?" In his hands was again her book. 

She simply shook her head, staring at the book in his large hands as she settled into her blanket again. 

_"Dad, what's going on?" Kiran was in shock. Her mother looked like she was about to start sobbing. Her father- _

Her father seemed to be about to start haggling with these strangers over her. 

But that made no sense. She wasn't old enough yet to negotiate her own contract, but surely this wasn't the way it was supposed to go, like she was some animal being sold off! She was a human being! This wasn't the way things worked. She shook her head, staring in confusion at the man she thought she knew, at the strangers who had brought this delirium into her home, infected the ones she loved with this strange, sudden disregard for their own kin, their own blood. 

She looked to her mother again. The poor woman had started to shake, and Kiran rushed over to her. "Mum!" 

"Go to your room, Kiran. Please." The poor woman could barely whisper to her daughter, but Kiran saw the look in her eyes. 

Without a backward glance, she rushed up the stairs. 

Her room, lined with its shelves of stuffed animals and books, was no solace. The windows were shut tight against the warm rays of the early evening, the tapping fingers of the windswept leaves. 

She grabbed up a duffle bag, stuffing clothes into it, her hairbrush, her toothbrush. Standing in front of the shelf near her bed, she reached up to the books. Lewis Carroll, Burroughs, Homer. She grabbed for her books, her hands closing on only three before her father came up the stairs, rushing before the strangers. Closing her bag, Kiran turned to face him. 

"Is this any way to act, Kiran? These are our guests." Her father was frowning, his hands wringing before him. "They want to give you a job. It's quite an honor!" 

He had said something, and now watched her, waiting. 

"W-what?" 

"I asked what you saw out there." He raised one eyebrow, a dark arch over his cold, ice-shard eyes. 

She shook the cobwebs from inside her brain. "I don't know how many. Didn't see them." He snorted in response. "But they are there." His brows lowered, settling on the bridge of his nose, dark vultures, or storm clouds. "Boot leather. Shifting feet. Please believe me." 

The eerie eyes regarded her, his head resting back against the cold wall. He sniffed the air. Fear. Sweat. Dust. The soft scent of her. Nothing to suggest she was lying, that she had any reason to lie. He tilted his head slightly, watching her edge back a little more, shifting herself further away from him inside the tiny room. Like there was somewhere else to hide. 

"All right rabbit. It's still your game. For now." 


	4. Chapter Four

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

_The hover was dark inside, and Kiran wedged herself into the furthest corner of the back of it, watching the strangers with large eyes. Only her father had walked out to the hover, Kiran in tow, between the two strangers; her mother remained, wailing, inside. _

"Now, that money; it will come to us regardless of how she rates, correct?" Kiran's father pushed her into the hover, turning anxiously to the elder man. "Even if she only rates a first level, correct?" 

"Correct. We pay for the employ, not the rating. Any Psi is a useful Psi, even a first ranked." He shook hands with her father, not looking at the man before sliding into the hover with Kiran and closing the door. Kiran shrunk back further from him. "Do you know why we're taking you with us?" He sighed at the faint shake of her head. "They never know… Have you ever known things you shouldn't, about what people were thinking or feeling?" A nod, this time a little stronger. 

"B-but that's not ILLEGAL! Is it?" 

"Oh, no. We simply find that it is actually quite to our benefit to employ Psi talent in the corps of the Police." The stranger smiled at her, a warm, genuine smile. "We understand that this is all sudden for you, being taken from your family and all. And I am sorry to tell you that it will be more difficult once we arrive at the House. That's where you will be living, with other Psi, while we test you for your abilities and train you." He turned to watch the streets and houses give way to trees, then businesses and the heart of the city, and then fade to open highway. "I am not entirely certain of what the tests consist of, I'm afraid. Otherwise I might be able to allieve some of your fears." 

"Have you done this often?" She sounded so small. 

"Oh, more times than I can count. My own daughter is now in the corps. She rated second rank." He smiled again, a proud smile. "The new Psi are, unfortunately, always removed from their families. It helps to protect them, the Psi that is, during a vulnerable time while they come to terms with what they are. It is a time of great stress, and Psi sometimes lash out unconsciously. We have, unfortunately, had a few instances where very powerful Psi were killed by officers because they lashed out." 

Kiran stared at him in shock, all the information bouncing around in her mind, none of it fully sinking in. 

"Why me?" 

"Your parents noticed that you answered questions before they asked them, among other things. Like any responsible, loving parent, they want you to get the best training available, to become what you have the potential for." 

"And if I fail the tests?" Big eyes, sad, scared eyes. 

"You will be returned to your parents. But no one has managed to fail them all. We are careful which leads we follow." 

Kiran sighed, conceding to the thoughts, closing the worn pages of The Odyssey. At this rate it would take her all night to read the one page. She tried to let her mind wander, but then it turned, revolted against her, turned to the man leaning in the corner, the man thumbing through her Nietzsche. The man she swore had saved her. A man who hardly seemed aware of her. 

He was a murderer; everyone in Slam was, either before or after they got thrown into the black pit. Some managed to keep their conscience. She doubted he ever had one. His eyes were feral. Feral, but also intelligent. He devoured her books like a wildfire, consuming all before it. He hasn't killed you yet, that nagging, betraying spot in the back of her head chimed in, voicing one of her concerns. A murderer, a fighter. She had heard that he drank the blood of men. She had heard that he killed for the sheer pleasure of it. She had heard that he took pleasure in the feel of life pouring over his hands. 

But she had only seen him kill when provoked. 

Yes, he smelled of blood. He certainly knew how to bring swift death. Here, in cramped quarters, she had seen nothing save a cruel disregard of her. He had made no gestures of hostility, or even aggression. 

But he was still a murderer. 

She settled back again, burying herself in her blanket, pressing her back to the wall. The light was between them, and he had his knees pulled up as he read to shield his eyes. His mirrored eyes that occasionally shot a cold, inhuman look at her, a look that chilled her, made her stomach wrap around her spine and shake. At least in the blanket, with it over her head, he couldn't always tell where her head was to send that stare into her soul. 

What was the point in trying to figure out if he was or was not a murderer, if he was or was not capable of doing it. All she need do was survive until he left, change holes, and she would be home free, at least until the next big bad came looking for her. 

And if she survived, no more strays. 

She curled up into a tighter ball. 

He only raised an eyebrow as she buried herself in the blanket again with an explosive sigh. She was nervous, afraid. Of him, he was sure. And that was a thought that brought a smile to his lips. The blankets shivered a few times, then went still. 

An odd child. He tilted his head. Most of her time was spent staring at him as if he was about to sprout horns, a tail, and rip her soul from her body. The small portion left was spent in fitful attempts at sleep. Until she had led him to this hidey hole, he'd barely known she existed. Granted, when she'd run into him, chased by a man who had sent thugs to knife him in the back, he had been amused by the cleverness of a child to use sudden light against shined assailants. And he had smiled at the effect it had had to give her time to run. And then she had found him, knifed, bleeding, and led him to safety. Debt paid. Life for life. 

But a medkit? He'd not seen that coming. The rabbit would live a while longer. And he would even follow her rules in this hole, no matter how it galled him. But when he was free… 

With a shake, he turned his eyes down to the pages again. Pity he couldn't turn out that light. 


	5. Chapter Five

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

_ Fear. Horror. Pain. _

Changing the very beliefs of someone, making them think something. They can't mean it. That is wrong! They're testing me again! It's not happening! 

She struggled, thrashed, mewed quietly, bound up in her blanket. 

_The shocksticks hurt, stung, sent her spine into spasms of agony. They were bellowing at her to force the memories on the man. They kept shouting, telling her that she had to do it. They told her that she would regret it if she didn't. _

It can't be real. They can't mean it. They want to see if I'll give in. 

Her thrashing grew more extreme, the panic-stricken whimpers faintly louder. He moved, watching her with slight concern, watching her for signs that she would hurt herself, try to hurt him. He had seen the flash of a shiv at her thigh. 

_Another blow from the shockstick. This one knocked her to her knees. The man in the other room was pleading with the officer to be let go. He wanted to return to his family. He didn't know what they were saying he had done. He had been watching his 4 year old daughter. _

Kiran could hear his voice, clear, scared, through the speakers. He sounded as scared as she. 

They can't mean for me to actually do it. They're supposed to be the good guys. I can't do something like that! He's innocent! 

The officer with her raised his stick again, telling her the pain would stop when she made the man believe he had murdered the girl in the District. 

The next blow landed. Kiran couldn't see. Her world was white and spots. 

The officer bellowed for her to do it. His voice made the spots spin around her head, made gravity reverse. 

Louder. The order, the same order, the insistence. Her feeble headshake. The searing lick of pain. The blow from the shockstick. 

The girl arched again, convulsing, crying. 

The spots were growing, merging. The edges of the world were already indistinct. Again, his order. 

"Do it!" 

"NO!" She threw herself out of her blanket, eyes wide, sweat soaking her filthy shirt. She struck his chest, her small fist landing on his shoulder, her open palm on his arm. Her cheek was against his throat. He stiffened. She made a small whimpering noise, her body shaking fitfully. He pushed her back onto her blanket. 

The wide eyes then focused, finding his cold, still face, his arm stretched out to her, his hand pushing her back. 

"Whatever it was, it was a dream." His brows met over his deep liquid eyes. "Be quiet, rabbit." He was listening to the tunnel, head tilted to the side. He closed his eyes, concentrating. Ignoring her, her fast breathing, her panicked gasps for air. Then he swore. "Good one, rabbit. Now they know we're here." 

Her eyes widened, and she reached for the torch, hugging it to her, biting her lip. 

"I'm gunna deal with this." 

He reached one long arm toward the crate, halted, her fingers lightly touching his arm. 

"What about me?" her voice was small, terrified. "If they ghost you, they'll come in for me." 

He only shrugged. She let her hand fall, gathered her books. 

"Fine then." 

A strip of cloth secured the torch to her hip and thigh, secure against her leg. The thin, woolen blankets, folded neatly into a rather flat square, were tucked at her back with yet another cloth strip, the books tied within it. She tied the little pouch around her wrist. Simple. Efficient. Practiced. She clicked off the torch, still staring at him. 

He stooped, pulling the crate aside, dropping to his knees, pulling the shiv from its hiding space at the small of his back. Hands and knees silent, body jammed into the tunnel, so tight around his broad form, he inched forward. Ahead, in the dark, he heard shifting, worried muttering. He continued forward. He heard her hand on the floor, silently hissing as she slid it forward, almost to his foot. 

The grate was opened, and Riddick could see a pair of legs, pacing one step in either way, nervous. The scent of fear, anxiety, sweat. It reverberated down the tunnel to him, the short distance only amplifying the reactions of the man who swore at the opening. 

Riddick tightened his grip on the shiv. 

He inched ahead, sniffing, listening. 

One voice muttering. One pair of feet shifting. 

Closer. 

In a flash, like a serpent, the shiv lashed out, ripping clean and sharp. The metallic tooth of steel loosed a spray of coppery mist, a cry of agony, a gathering pool of blood. Muscles and tendons were shorn, just above the knee. 

The would-be attacker collapsed. He howled in pain. 

Riddick exploded out of the tight passageway, leaping atop the other. The shiv slunk into flesh, a wet sound, rather hollow. Blood pooled at his knee, where the wound, a nice stab to the small of the back, just to the left of the spine, bled, the ichor flowing hot in the dark. 

Behind him, he heard the scramble of the girl, slipping briefly in the blood as she took off down the corridor, her thigh hitting his side as she pressed past him, squirming around him in the narrow opening of the tunnel. 

_That's right. Run, little rabbit._

He yanked the struggling man back into the bowels of the wall. The sharp cry ended suddenly, cut short by a sickening, slurping, wrenching, crunching sound. 

He carefully cleaned the blood off his shiv on the man's stained shirt, a shirt becoming more crimson in the dark as each moment passed. Riddick eased himself out of the tunnel, a smile twisting his lip. 

_Now where has that rabbit gone?_

"Bad choice, boy." 

The voice behind Riddick was a slow drawl. He slowly turned his head, vertebrae in his solid neck popping as he did so. 

"Khyron." His gravely rasp was almost pleasant, conversational. He cast his eyes over the six men at the stocky dark man's back. "What's a girl like you doin' in a place like this?" 

"You might just want to drop that shiv. Ya'll are in enough trouble already." 


	6. Chapter Six

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other   
characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Khyron let his own smile start, pulling at his mouth, touching nothing else on his lean jawed face. His eyes flashed, danger in the dark.  
  
Riddick met the gaze with his own chill, his own nightmare smile. His hand held firm on the handle of the faintly shining shiv. The muscles in his shoulders, arms, chest visibly relaxed as his eyes bored into Khyron's. Again he rolled his neck, the sound of vertebrae popping against each other echoed through the silent corridor.

The men behind Khyron shifted, looking between the two large men.

"Ya'll aren't gunna keep holding onto that shiv, are ya? Fighting'll just make it hurt more, boy."

Riddick snorted. "Such a big fuss over such a small man. You've been hunting me for months, Khyron. Your boys haven't succeeded yet. Was he really worth all this trouble, all the blood of your boys?" The smile grew wider, an icy grin. "Was he really that good a fuck?"

The smile vanished from Khyron's face, the slender jaw clenching, the eyes widening in rage. His breathing sped up, flaring nostrils, harsh in the cold air. Even to shined eyes, the mottled rage rising in his skin was visible. The jaws continued to work; the grinding plaint of teeth wearing into teeth raised the hackles of the men. The dark brows descended onto the roman nose.

"He," Khyron finally managed to splutter, "was my brother."

"So? You're always telling whoever will listen that you and he were descended from Roman Emperors," Riddick's grin turned a little colder. "Everyone knows how close those sibs were. Ya'll." His eyes narrowed, a pleased gleam reflecting from deep within at the outraged near-squeal that escaped Khyron.

The men behind him shifted again, unsure, their leader fuming, raging. Six men began to reach for weapons.

Khyron was spluttering.

He had gone from the mottled reds and purples to a winter pale.

His hands were clenched at his sides.

The thick, ropy shoulders were bunched, long arms stiff at his sides.

The barrel chest heaved.

A vein had begun to stand out on his forehead.

"Careful, Khyron. It looks like you're about to blow a fuse. A comeback isn't all that necessary."

There was a flicker of movement at the back of Khyron's pack. One of the men vanished in the dark.

_ Looks like Khyron chose the wrong guy, there_, Riddick growled to himself.

"You!" Khyron could barely get the word out from between his clenched teeth.

Riddick only smiled.

"YOU!" Khyron's eyes showed full white around them.

"You said that already, Khyron."

Another flicker in the back.

This time Riddick saw it.

It was the flash of a shiv, burying itself into the throat. The man couldn't get out as much as a squeak as the blade pulled him back out of life.

It was only a matter of time before someone noticed. Those two men had been spaced back a little from the others. Now a tight bunch of four was all that remained behind Khyron.

The smell of blood was filling the hallway now, pooling near Riddick's feet from within the tunnel to the girl's now abandoned lair. The coppery scent was heavy, nearly a tangible beast in the dark. It twisted and turned, writhing around the men.

"Hope you weren't as attached to that one," The smile was fading from Riddick's wry mouth, but hints of it still lingered. His heavy hand casually motioned towards the slowly accumulating pool, the stilling trickle from the duct.

With a roar, Khyron leapt at the slightly taller Riddick, yanking a shiv from his waist, lunging straight for Riddick's throat.

The shiv shone vicious in the dark, winking at Riddick as it hissed through the space between them. He watched the blade. The way the hand holding it shimmered through the Shine. The flicker around the straight double edged steel. He noted, in an odd corner of his mind, that the shiv had a carved bone handle.

Then he tilted his head to the side. Snapped up his hand.

His thick, calloused palm struck the wrist of the stocky man. The knife slid past his ear, biting the air over Riddick's sturdy shoulder with a soft hiss.

The heavy hand flew, the back of it striking Khyron's jaw. The dark man reeled back a step, his eyes widening, near madness.

With a snarl, a curse, he leapt at Riddick, his face contorted in a show of feral aggression. He struck Riddick hard, sending him back a tad, fighting, ripping, as if gone completely mad. Snarls of fury. A barrage of blows from his fist. Slashes and stabs from his shiv. Rips from his teeth.

Eyes narrowed, Riddick focused on the blows, sweating. His hands flew in a fervor, a defensive storm, striking forearms, wrists.

He felt the hot kiss of the blade on his bicep, felt the blood flow.

Over the stitches on his side, a new slash brought a grunt through his clenched teeth, the blade dragging over ribs. The heat of the blood. The seductive purr of the pain.

The grip of anger on the back of his skull.

Riddick jabbed in with his curved blade, drawing the parry of Khyron. The other hand grabbed Khyron's sleeve, yanking the smaller man to the side, sending him crashing against the wall, the floor.

He rolled, fast to regain his feet.

But Riddick's boot moved faster, catching Khyron with a vicious blow to the middle of his chest.

The blow was swiftly followed by the rest of the huge convict. Riddick struck the man again, his weight behind the hand that crushed Khyron's nose. The curved shiv sheared in above Khyron's brow, blood pouring over the man's face.

Riddick's face was icy calm. No emotion showed; no glint in the eyes, no twitch to the hard mouth. Just a tensing of the muscles in his strong jaw as he concentrated on the man below him, the blade in his hands, the blood flowing.

Khyron's men, staring in shock, look to one another.

A cry goes up from the pair of throats- only two of the men remain, the others had vanished into the bowels of the Slam.

Then as the first stared in horror, from behind the other rose a thin blade, held in a pale hand. It plunged into the throat of the other, the possessor of the shimmering hand holding it unseen behind the bulk of the large man. He was pulled backwards to disappear in the dark.

Crying out in horror, the first turned to bolt.

A hand around his throat stopped him short.

A hand belonging to the huge man they had come to kill.

The man now in control of the descending blade.

Riddick dropped the body of the man, breathing hard. Blood traced intricate spiderwebs on his arm, ribs, and back. He stood for a moment, staring at the bloody shiv in his hand.

Out of the darkness, glowing red in the Shine, the girl stepped towards him. In her hand dripped another shiv. She moved with a confidence he'd never have guessed her small frame could hold. Eyes fixed on him; she took steady strides, closing the dark distance between them. She stopped a short distance away, her head tilted.

"What are you, some kind of spook?" Riddick's eyes blurred slightly, his leg buckling under him as exhaustion swept over his frame.


	7. Chapter Seven

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other   
characters not seen in Pitch Black.

"Are you going to be able to get up?" She leaned over him, slipping her shiv into the sheathe at her thigh. Her hand settled onto his shoulder for a brief moment before she recoiled.

He stared up at her for a moment, then slowly rose to his feet. The blood squelched under his boots. He glanced down, then back to her.

"You ghosted five?" He peered down at her, raising an eyebrow.

"You're covered in blood…" She shrunk away from him, shoulders rising as she cringed away, wrists crossing over her chest.

"Answer me."

She stared, wide eyed into his gaze, then nodded. Her mouth worked a few times without a sound.

"Th-that blood… It's all over you." She looked down at her own hands, touched by spots of color in the low light. She blinked, as if confused by the drying life on her hand. She lightly touched the spots with delicate fingertips. "Me too. Follow me?" She began to slowly turn, reaching towards him once again.

He stared at her for a moment more.

She indicated the two bodies he had left, crumpled, discarded, on the floor. Again, her tentative movement down the corridor.

With a nod, he followed.

She moved easily, if cautiously, in the dark. Her hand trailed on the wall. Her head swung to the side at any hint of noise, eyes wide, nostrils flared, searching for any hint as to the source of the sound.

She chose few passages, stopping every so often at corners, feeling the corners, just above her shoulder height, running fingers over them, frowning. She was softly sniffing the air, peering into the near inky darkness, lit only by strips of softly incandescent material near the floor. With a few tentative steps down one of the branches of the corridor, she turned, heading the other way, peering ahead. Then back, continuing with a little more confidence down the first passage she had aborted.

"This way. It's this way."

Riddick peered at her for a moment. His eyebrow twitched slightly. He took in his breath, to speak, but she was moving away on light, soundless feet.

Another few forks. Another few changes in direction. Her feet, bare, silent, found a path while she ran her ling fingers over the walls. Each corner they reached, each fork, another replay of the same ritual.

Fingers seeking over the corner. A few steps down either path. Her chewing her lip while she pondered their direction.

Her face contorted as she peered in the dark, her body shimmering, red and cream to Riddick's sight, her hands seeking for something.

With an exclamation, she turned her head back to where she guessed he was. She nodded, patting the corner, her face breaking into a wide grin. When he approached, he saw that there were a few small pocks in the wall; marks that looked like something had once been bolted there. A hinge, or a plaque.

Feeling the heat of his body, she tilted her head up to him.

"This way," she breathed, "we can clean off the blood nearby."

A few more turns. A faster pace now, almost jogging in the dark.

Ahead, her eyes fixed on it.

A point of light, pouring faintly into the passage.

She raised her hand, pointing.

"You insane? That's a barracks!" Riddick grabbed her by the arm, spinning her to face him. His face twisted into a snarl, scowling and growling low at her, holding her by her arms close by him, peering into her face.

Her face, now reflecting her fear, her sudden realization of what he thought.

"No! Nearby is an abandoned guard washroom! Lights don't work- electrical problems. They don't use it. We can!" Her head began to shake from side to side, "Not gunna turn you over to them! P-please believe me." A rim of white shown around her dark eyes. She went still in his grip, staring into his face, shaking in his hands. His face returned to its chill mask.

He slowly let go of her, straightening, squaring his shoulders. He gave a slight nod.

It was several paces past the barracks when she finally led him through a door. The room wasn't too large, benches in the center, lockers on the walls. A doorway opposite the entrance.

"The barracks is for on-duties. They've never pushed to get the electric fixed in here." She slipped through the doorway, into the next room.

Showers.

A large room, separated into smaller ten by ten open sided boxes. The boxes were defined by two walls, walls that ended two feet before the ceiling. Walls that, like the back ones, sported showerheads, each with a pair of knobs under it. There were nine heads to a space.

She slipped to the furthest back, shedding her bundles and torch in the back of one. The torch sputtered slightly before shedding its dim light to the small space. She set the shiv from her thigh on the bundle. That done, she headed across the recessed walkway down the center of the room to the showers directly across from her gear, She turned on one corner; four of the heads. She leapt back, letting the water hit the floor and heat up.

"Also makes a great time to clean clothes." She smiled a little, looking over at him. "There's soap in the stalls. And hot water."

She slipped into the spray of water, letting it soak into her clothes, her skin. It slicked her hair to her skull, shoulders, neck. The red slowly slid from her hands and arm. Long fingers closed over the soap, rubbing it into the course uniform.

"Why don't you take off that necklace. Looks ugly, uncomfortable." Riddick had started the water in the other corner, standing in the cold spray as it warmed. She opened her eyes, blinking owlishly in confusion. He pointed to her throat. Her hand lifted.

"This? I can't." She bit her lower lip, and he shrugged.

"How'd you ghost those men?" Again, the large, slow blink. "I saw you. How."

"Bare feet are silent. And they were distracted." She shrugged. "Couldn't let them kill you."

"Why not? You don't owe me anything. And I'm not the protective type."

She shook her head. "It would have been wrong," was her simple answer, earning herself a harsh, barking laugh

"Someone actually concerns themselves with right and wrong in this pit?" He turned to grin at her, eyes sparkling with humor.

She frowned, her face still, her eyes sad.

"Well, some of us still have our morals, twisted as this pit makes them." She looked into his face for a moment more, chewing on the corner of her mouth. Then she turned, letting the water rinse lather from her shirt and arms. "I think that even your brand of morality would say that bringing six men with you to fight one is bad form."

"Yeah. We proved he needed more." He watched the water on her, the clothing sticking to her. She looked over her shoulder, then extended her hand, offering him the bar of rough soap. Taking it, he peeled off his wet shirt, rubbing the soap into the material. "Where did you learn to ghost men like that?"

She turned, shrugged.

"A girl learns to protect herself in here. 'There are no Innocents in Slam' after all."

He watched her in silence again, letting the time ease over him with the water.

"Tell me, Spook. Why you here?"

"Spook?" She peered over her shoulder, squinting a little as the water flowed over her brow.

"Well, rabbits don't get blood on their hands. Rabbits also don't fade in and out of shadows. Ghosts do, but ghosts don't kill. So," he spread his hands, "Spook."

She made a soft noise, sending the water blowing away from her face. "I like it better than Rabbit."

"Don't evade. I asked you a question."

"I'm here because I got on the wrong side of some powerful men. You're here because you're a dangerous criminal, probably a murderer, deemed a Security Risk at other facilities. Why is anyone here?"

He moved in a rush, his arms to either side of her, fists against the wall. His face was inches from hers, the water pouring over him, heat rushing from his body.

"I told you. Answer the questions." His deep voice had dropped to a cruel hiss, the sound of an impending avalanche, of the hint of a blizzard


	8. Chapter Eight

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other   
characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Spook cringed back from him, flattening herself against the damp wall. Her dark eyes darted to the sides. He'd catch her before she could duck under the well-muscled arms. Back to the front, where Riddick's wet, bare chest and muscled body blocked her. She let out a whimpered sigh, lowered her head, closed her eyes.

"Why do you care," she asked in a small voice, a shaking voice. "I'm here. What else matters?"

He just frowned at her, shifting, rolling his shoulders. She watched idly through lowered lids as the muscles slid and twisted beneath his skin. "The answer." Another sigh. The dark eyes closed again, squeezing them tightly shut. "Spook, now." There was a deep, warning tone to the gravel pit voice, a tone that spoke of blood and of pain.

"I'm a Psi. That's why I'm here." Her face was wet, and drops slid over her cheeks. Riddick had a sudden thought that one or two of the trails on her pale face might be tears. He tilted his head to the side, peering at her from under lowered brows, water dripping from his face. She shook her head again, slowly from side to side, eyes still tightly shut. Her breath shuddered, catching in her throat. She crossed her arms over her soaked chest, feeling the coarse, wet material grate against her arms. "I attacked an officer." Her voice was hopeless, small. It reminded him of the silent cringe of a dog expecting a blow.

"A Psi. You expect me to believe that?" His breath puffed the water streaming off his face into hers. It was his turn to shake his head.

Spook tilted her chin up, almost proud in her defiant, angry stare.

"Do you think I'd wear this damned collar if it wasn't the truth?" Her fingertips rested lightly on the steel circlet for a moment before she angrily pushed at his arm, then ducked under it when her attempted force had no effect, stomped barefoot away to where her blankets were. She lifted one, shielding herself with it. Riddick watched her with that cold, glowing, unblinking stare, his fists still planted on the wall, cheek against his shoulder as he gazed at her.

She shivered. That stare always seemed to suck the warmth right out of her, down to her bones. Carefully holding the blanket around her, she peeled off her wet clothes, hanging them over the shower wall to dry. She settled into the corner, hands keeping the blanket tight around her. Under the blanket, her hand rested uneasily on the shiv beneath her arm.

"You've never had to wear this thing. You don't know what it's like!" Her lower lip trembled. "Everyone knows YOU'RE dangerous. You're Riddick. No one knows just how many you've killed. You're a predator. Me? I'm marked as something not natural. You think I'm lying? Think I'd choose something like that?" She let her head s ag, forehead on her pulled up knees, the blanket still tight around her. "Go fuck yourself." Her voice was low, sullen.

The huge man chuckled, his smile hidden behind his shoulder. The sound started deep in his chest, reverberated off the walls, blending with the flowing water to sound like distant thunder. He heaved himself off the wall, reached out to turn off the water, dripped his way over towards her, stooping to pick up his shirt. He tossed his shirt over the partition next to hers. His bare feet squelched wetly on the tile. He looked down at her for a long while. A few drops of water slowly flung themselves from his brow as he stared down at her.

"Go fuck myself?"

She ignored him, keeping her face pressed into her knees and the harsh woolen blanket. Her shoulders shook.

"Look at me." She lifted her face, her brows low over her brooding eyes. "Did you kill him, this officer you attacked?" She shook her head, lowering her face again, damp hair falling to stick to her cheek in a small wavering curl. "You know how to kill. Or did you learn that here?" She faintly nodded.

"Psi aren't good at defending themselves. These collars make this a death sentence." Her voice was muffled by her knees, but he could hear her plain enough.

"Didn't kill you, Spook." He tilted his head to the side. She raised her face to look into his cold gaze, stare deep into the silvered eyes with her open, honest dark ones. The look in her eyes chilled Riddick- there was emotion, pure and strong. Pain, sadness, loss. Right there, thrown into his face. No one in Slam showed things like that. Eyes in the pit were dead things, dead or shined. Nothing got through to them, except occasionally the rage. Her eyes, so honest, so open, held him. As surely as a rat in a trap, her eyes pinned him in place.

"No. It did." She held his gaze, looking deep into his eyes, into him. Her face was damp. There was a red puffiness around her eyes. She shivered in the blanket. But her voice was strangely steady, calm. Quiet, but stable. Subdued, but without even a hint of the tears.

Her head tilted back, her eyes releasing him as she turned them to the ceiling. His body sagged for a moment before he regained himself, straightening, squaring his shoulders, rolling his head, letting the vertebrae snap and pop. She murmured something.

"What was that?"

"Hmm? Oh. Was musing. 'Terrible experiences pose the riddle weather the person who has them is not terrible.'"

"That book of yours. Nietzsche?" She nodded.

"You read it?" His turn to nod, and it brought a smile to her lips. "Discovered that there's not much else to do in a hidey-hole?" She closed her eyes for a moment, tilting her head back against the wall again. She shifted, slipping one arm out of the safety of the blanket. She reached for the other woolen blanket, then tossed it to him with a small smile pulling at the corner of her lip. "Here. The clothes dry faster without a body in them."

He caught the blanket in one hand, stared at it for a long moment. "Not afraid?" He moved closer to her, towering over her. He nearly smiled as she indeed cringed tighter against the wall. Her eyes shifted to the sides, then back to him. There was a slight scent of nerves, the faintest trace of fear in the air.

"I- you had chances before... in my hideaway..."

He took a step back from her, sat down, cross-legged before her.

"'One has to repay good and ill -- but why precisely to the person who has done us good or ill?'"


	9. Chapter Nine

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other   
characters not seen in Pitch Black.

He was a murderer. He was a lone wolf. He was unpredictable. He was dangerous. He was vicious. He was cruel. He had no qualms about having a complete stranger's life flowing over his hands.

And god help her, she couldn't get away from him.

Everywhere she went, he appeared out of the darkness, watching her. The mess, the library, any hall she took more than once.

She was sure he knew where her new rabbit hole was already. It was on account of that one man that she'd changed hideaways five times in the last month. She had changed just yesterday, but she already heard silent steps behind her as she scurried towards the mess.

Always in the dark. She always heard the footsteps now. Ever since that cold night, where he stared at her, picked up her book, left her sitting there, alone, in the pale light of the torch. She had just sat there on the cold tile, wrapped in her blanket.

A few weeks later she had returned to her hidey-hole to find her book, her tattered, worn, scuffed Nietzsche laying innocent on her blankets. His scent was strong in the bedding. He had lain there, reading for a while before he left. And she would never have known, except for her lone book returned, another missing, the deep, musky scent of him. She'd changed havens. Again, the book sitting on her bed, the next missing, his scent hanging heavy in the air.

The last move followed what was perhaps the eeriest prompt. She'd returned to find a pristine new medkit sitting on top of her books. There was slight scuffing on the lid, and a suspicious stain on one corner, but the inside was fully stocked- antibiotics, pain killers, bandages, the individually packed sterile needles and suture silk.

She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself as she moved quickly down the hall. The light spilled from the mess, pouring over the wall, the floor.

Within was light. Within was food. Within were the guards.

Talbot looked up from his conversation when she entered, his customary scowl replaced by a leer as his eyes drank her in. She glanced behind her. The footsteps had vanished with the light. She looked back. Talbot was swaggering toward the trough of food, his eyes still lingering on her. They blatantly pawed over her form from across the room. She could feel them, trailing over her. It sickened her almost enough to turn and leave the mess.

But she needed to eat. And she needed the company of a crowd. It was instinct, she knew. The idea of safety in numbers. It called out in some ancient, instinctive cry. The herd was within the room. The numbers were, granted, a host of murderers, mad dogs, lunatics, but they were numbers.

Her hand closed on the metal bowl. It fit, cold and snug, in the curve of her hand. So far, he hadn't appeared. Maybe the footsteps were only in her head. Maybe she was safe for the moment.

"Haven't seen you in a while, doll. You been in trouble?" Talbot reached towards her. She yanked her shoulder away, jerking her arm out of reach for the moment. Talbot's eyes darkened. "Now, see," he slopped a generous ladleful of the gruel into her bowl. "I know you weren't in trouble with a guard. They'd have told me. What does that leave us?" She backed away from him, clutching the bowl in her hands. "Heard from some of the boys that you've been with this one guy. Some inmate. That true?" Her eyes were wary, flitting from his face to her surroundings. She was in an open space, the tables and inmates a few yards behind her. "Now, doll, I'm at an impasse. I don't even know your name." He smiled. "How 'bout you tell me that, and then I let you go eat."

She studied his face, the leer, the salacious look in his eyes. For a moment she just stared at him, worrying her lip between her teeth. Her deep, dark eyes showed none of her battle, her worry, her nervous thoughts.

"Spook." Such a good description he had given her. A specter, a mere shade, a dead thing, haunting this pit of hell. A quite fitting name.

Talbot was taken aback by it, and she slipped off among the tables while he gaped at her.

Her usual space was empty. She settled into the cold corner, sinking to the floor with her back against the metal of the wall. Her fingers scooped at the slop in the bowl. Her dark eyes scanned the room.

They were packed at the tables, shouldering, pushing, snarling at one another for a bit of space. Posturing like feral beasts. Each section, each table, had its own hierarchy, its own alpha dog. A few women were mixed in, staying near the men they sought for protection, the rare one trying not to be noticed. She watched as one poor soul was yanked backward to one of the tables, a large hand in her hair.

Spook shuddered, turning her eyes to the bowl. A loose lock of hair slipped down from where it had been swept behind her ear. She puffed at it through pursed lips, then continued to carefully scoop fingerfuls of the pasty, thick, mealy substance that she tried hard not to think on. At least it was full of all the crap that nutritionists said she needed to live. Too bad taste wasn't something that was necessary for survival. She sighed lightly, the loose lock of hair puffing irritably away from her face for a moment before settling back to hang alongside her nose.

She let her mind wander over the explored corridors, over her mental map of Slam. There was a promising grate in what she arbitrarily called the North section. Not much traffic there, as it was a side passage off the main cell block, and wasn't the way to the privs or the "yard." It led in a loop. Originally a part of the design meant to hold rioting prisoners, it stood dusty and vacant. There was an old grate there, and she suspected that, like a few others she had found in similar places, it had originally been meant to house a Solitary box. If it was what she thought, it might be a good place for the next few days.

She would be closer to the main population, who still stayed in the cells they'd been assigned, but perhaps that would discourage Him from following her. It was worse never seeing him, she decided. Waking up or coming in to smell his lingering scent clinging to the place, wrapping itself around her. It would be better to find him there. Then she at least would know he was there, not the doubts of never seeing him, of smelling him, of muffled footsteps in empty halls.

A pair of boots planted themselves firmly before her, set at what would probably shoulder width to their owner. Spook carefully sucked the last bite of gruel from her fingers, looking regretfully to the nearly three-quarters empty bowl that was surely about to be wrenched from her. She blinked once, then slowly lifted her chin, fixing her face to an impassive mask.

The man before her was short, broad in the chest, a bit thick around the middle. It was the physique of a schoolyard bully who'd been glutting himself on the stolen lunches of the smaller children. His coarse dirty- blonde hair was short, and had the appearance of having been slashed off with a knife. He stared down at her with cruel eyes of agate.

"You're that bitch of Riddick's, aren't you? I heard 'bout you. You helped fuck over Khyron and his boys." His foot lashed out fast, catching her in the thigh when she looked away. "I'm talkin' to you!" She yanked her face back towards him, bringing her legs in closer to her, her eyes clouding. She cringed away as he pulled back his foot for another blow. "I knew some of those boys. I could care less who ghosted Khyron, but those boys were friends. I hear you exed some of them." He reached down, grabbing a handful of her hair, pulling her to her feet. His hand flew, cuffing her sharply across her cheek. A small cry escaped her, lost in the bustle and noise of the mess.

Hand still twisted in her hair, surrounded by the bustle of the mess, he drug her to the door, out into the hallway. He pulled back his hand again.

Spook's hand lashed first, the clean silver of the shiv from her leg leaving a trail of red down the man's face, across from one temple to the other cheek, across the bridge of the twisted nose. The blood oozed slowly down his face.

"Fucking little whore!" He slammed her back against the wall, her head cracking solidly against the metal, his other hand closing around her throat, the one in her hair loosing. His fingers began to squeeze. There were flashes of light behind her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut against the splashes of bright and dark, gritting her teeth. The shiv fell from her numbing fingers.

"You shouldn't hit ladies." The voice echoed through her aching skull. It thrummed through her body, shaking her to her soul. Her dark eyes opened, her mouth working in vain attempt to draw breath around the constricting hand slowly crushing her.

He was standing behind her assailant, his glowing eyes boring into her. The man turned, still gripping her throat, dragging her around with him to hang from his hand, limp on the ground.  
"Riddick. I didn't expect to see you until after we left you her body." There was a harsh sound of nerves in the voice. She clawed weakly at the hand about her throat.


	10. Chapter Ten

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Riddick's low voice set the lights before her eyes to flashing. Her lungs were spasming, trying to draw air. Her eyes were wide with terror.

"You got me here now. You gunna throttle her for fun?"_  
_

_ Amazing._ The thought wandered suddenly through her mind. _I didn't realize I'd go numb like this._

The man holding her chuckled. The sound moved through his whole body. Spook could feel it in the strong hand crushing her throat.

"Probably will. It's nice to have control, you know? Even sweeter to take it from another person." He kept his eyes on Riddick, but pulled Spook's unresisting form in front of him, between himself and the huge man. "They told me you ghosted Khyron and his boys."

Riddick only shrugged, rolling his broad shoulders.

"You got shiv-happy on one of my friends, I kill yours." He shook the girl like a rag doll, a vicious smile twisting across his face.

"Which one was your friend? The one who squealed like a girl? The one who pissed himself?"

The hand about Spook's throat tightened.

Her hands were growing even more feeble in their efforts to claw at the one holding her throat. Her body sagged to the floor, one hand wilted to the cold cement. A few more feeble attempts to dislodge the man's strong hand. Then her weak tries ceased, her hand falling across her chest, her body sagging from the firm hold.

"See? They always stop a few moments before they die. I'd had some other plans for her before I killed the little bitch, but since you're already here..."

Riddick's eyes narrowed, the sheen from them barely visible. His hand twitched, the silver curve of a shiv appearing in his grasp. Spook's fingers moves slightly.

"You know what they're saying? They're saying that Riddick's gone soft. They say that this little bitch tamed the Big Bad." He tilted his head, studying Riddick. "Know what? I think they're right."

A shiv flashed in an arc, the narrow blade sinking deep into the man's side. Blood eased around the thin handle of carved bone, staining the hand that fell from the blade. Two pairs of eyes stared at the blade in surprise. One recovered faster.

"You fucking-"the shining gleam of Riddick's blade opened the throat of the man, then twisted in the large hand. Riddick stepped in close, sinking the metal shard deep into the small of his back, next to the spine, just to the left side.

"Told you. You shouldn't hit women. They always get even."

Her throat hurt.

Her cheek hurt.

Her head hurt.

She wasn't in her rabbit-hole.

Spook bolted upright, or as close to it as she could. She couldn't see a damn thing. Her breath came in short pants that made her throat ache even more.

There were coarse blankets beneath her, as well as a coarse mattress. Beside her was a familiar heat, the well-known scent clinging to everything.

"You finally woke up. Was getting worried." That voice, deep, cold, echoing in the darkness.

A torch flared weakly to life.

He was sitting on the outer edge of the rude cot, his back against the wall, one foot up on the cot, knee drawn in towards his burly chest. His hand caught her chin before she saw him move, tilting her face to the side to study the darkening patch around her eye, spilling onto her cheek. He lifted her narrow chin to look at the bruises that marked the pale throat. With a grunt, he released her, turning to the side.

Spook just curled up around her knees, shaking softly.

"He won't bother you again, Spook. Here." In his extended hands lay her pair of shivs, cleaned of all traces of the blood that had stained them, even the carved handles clean. She just stared at them, staring at his hands.

With a silent sob she turned away from him.

Riddick blinked. He tucked her shivs next to his, at his back.

"It's all right, Spook." His hand hovered over her, then lightly descended on her shoulder. He watched her, silent, unsure. She shook, curled up, making no sounds as she sobbed. There was a bruise at the base of her neck; he could just see it where her hair fell to the side. His brows lowered, eyes darkening.

And then he recoiled in shock.

She had twisted around, throwing herself against his chest, her arms over his shoulders, her check resting at his throat, her crown under his chin. She clung to him, her breath catching, shivering. Riddick sat stiffly, blinking, then slowly allowed his arms to settle around her, in an unaccustomed gesture.

"It's all right. You're safe here." He gently touched one hand to her hair, lightly feeling the soft strands beneath his calloused fingers in a foreign caress. She stilled a little beneath the touch, the shaking stopped though she still cried. He felt her hand tighten alongside his neck, felt her heart pounding against his chest.

She could feel the stiffness of his body, where the nervous tension tightened the muscles. His hands and arms were so light around her, as if afraid of touching her. He seemed to scarcely breathe while he held her. Yet his presence, even the smell of blood still clinging to him, strangely soothed her.

"You saved me again." Her voice was so quiet, barely more than a breath.

He just nodded against the top of her head.

"You needed saving, Spook. And I guess I'm just gunna have to keep an eye on you until you learn to not need saving anymore."


	11. Chapter Eleven

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

It was strange to be in the cell block after so long of trying to be anywhere but. She carefully moved down the halls, stiff, eyes wide, watching the looming pitchy forms of the doorless cell entrances, listening to the catcalls of the men within as she passed. They tossed their lewd words at her, their suggestions for her, their anatomical inquiries, impossibilities. None came out to harry her, however.

She was Riddick's Bitch, after all. She was his little gofer girl, his amusement, and he reacted quite harshly should anyone damage what he claimed as his property.

In her arms, held to her chest, were the blankets and clothes she'd taken and washed. The coarse material was nearly dry, and she had enjoyed the chance to curl up and read while she'd been waiting for them to get to that state. After all, Riddick had given her a gift. He had found a pale, coverless copy of Peter and Wendy. He'd left it sitting on the pair of cots that filled the side of the small cell that they shared. She had finished it that day. Twice.

The small smile touched her mouth again as she remembered the way he had watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her to find the present. He had nearly smiled, and that odd look alerted her that something was new, and she found the little book sitting on her thin pillow.

But today he didn't look up when she entered, staring intently at the scrap of paper in his hands, a scowl darkening his face. She set the blankets on the bed, moved beside him, resting her hand on his shoulder for a silent moment before he swatted it away in irritation.

"Go read, Spook. Got other shit to worry about." He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, eyes still fixed on the paper. She hovered there for a moment, then moved away, reached beside of the bed to her books, slipped into the back corner of the cots, taking the battered Odyssey with her. She sat, the book on her drawn up knees, watching him scowl in the low light.

It was that very scowl that had so often terrified her about him, making her fear him when he'd first decided that she should stay near him. His brows lowered over the brooding, mercurial eyes. The cold mouth warped into a dark snarling line. It was how she remembered the clouds looking in the deadly thunderstorms she saw in her days in the sun.

And then she set down her book, flopping over the cot, groping under it for a moment. Her hand closed on a small metal box lashed on the underside of the wire support weave. It detached with a few deft movements of her hands, the strips of cloth hanging as she pulled the box into the light.

Open, it revealed tobacco rolled in paper.

Menthol Cools.

She carefully shifted them around with her fingertip. Her lips moved in silent counting. Then, her hand shifted, reaching to the small of her back, where she pulled two more cigarettes from the waistband of her pants.

"Twenty Three. Do we try to bargain yet?"

He actually turned to look at her from the corner of his eye. "You've managed to collect twenty three?" There was a hint of surprise in his deep rumble.

She nodded. "They're not as careful in checking the dead as they could be... They're still valuable even if they have blood on them, right boss?"

Riddick only grunted. His eyes moved back to the paper without a word to her question.

Spook lashed the box back in its place, then retreated again to pick up her book, once more settling it on her knees. Open, the adventure of the poor men before her, she could get lost in the ancient writings. Instead she stared blankly at the prose._  
_

_ The guard, they told her, was in critical condition. He couldn't breathe on his own, only with the help of machines. There was no registering of brainwaves with the computer monitoring him. They stood around her, a loose ring, fifteen of them.__  
_

_ The transport was waiting. That same officer, the one who had taken her from her parents, her home, was there. He reached out one hand to her, a gentle smile on his face.__  
_

_ "I'm so sorry, child." He took her hand. He pulled her into a hug.__  
_

_ Something cold, metal, clicked into place around her throat.__  
_

_ They had decided that she was Dangerous. Like a mad dog, she would be dealt with. That collar told her everything. She could no longer feel the presence of the men around her. She could no longer hear the low murmur of their minds.__  
_

_ She yanked herself back from him, clawing at the ring of metal. Her eyes flitted from one uncaring face to the next.__  
_

_ The ring wouldn't come off.__  
_

_ "All right, boys. She's been neutralized. She's ready for transport to her new home." Kiran struggled only a little as two of the men grabbed her by her upper arms, half dragging her to the transport.__  
_

_ It was a large metal beast, about the size of the old earth vans, with no windows except for the ones where the guards and driver sat. The back opened, a short ramp descending to the ground. The men pushed her up it, sending her sprawling into the cramped compartment inside.__  
_

_ "Enjoy the ride," came one cruel voice. "And get used to the dark. You'll see a lot of it where you're heading." Then the doors enclosed her in inky black.__  
_

_ Cold metal under her hands as she pushed herself up. She felt her way towards the wall, then to a corner, settling herself there, shaking._

Riddick glanced back to where Spook curled in the corner. She had that look again, that glazed, stare, where she was gazing intently at the pages before her but not seeing them. Even her blinking seemed to stop when she got that look.

She was remembering.

He shook his head.

It could be a while before she remembered that the present was happening around her.

She was always getting lost in her thoughts. One wouldn't think that someone so young, even having done something to find herself in Slam would have so much cluttering the insides of their head as to actually get lost inside. Such an odd girl._  
_

_ But if she really is what she claims..._ Riddick looked her over again, eyes lingering on the metal a round her throat..._  
_

_ ...Invaluable._


	12. Chapter Twelve

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Also, I extend my apologies for taking so long on the next chapter. Life interfered.

It was always the same. She always woke up like that.

Riddick patiently waited while she calmed down from the panicked bolt that always followed her return from dreams, the one that always left her breathless, wide eyed, standing pressed against the wall where she'd been sleeping. She shook for a moment longer, her eyes wide, staring about her into the darkness.

"I'm right here, Spook."

At his voice, the girl sagged, her small body sliding down the wall until she was again sitting on the bed.

"You got a big choice today. All comes down to you." She tilted her head as she listened. "We're gunna go find the doc. When we do, you got a decision. We can leave you awake, or I can remove the consciousness issue for you." She looked rather confused. He smiled in the eternal night and sat down on the cot facing her. "Today we're going to try for your Shine." He put a finger on her lips before she could speak, watching as she perked up, excited. "I want to warn you. This'll hurt like a motherfucker. As you well know, there's no way in hell to get anesthesia in here. Which leaves you two choices. You can be awake, at least until you pass out from the pain. Or, when we get there, right before the doc starts, I can knock you out. Think on that."

"Either way you'll stay with me?" There was a slight tremor in her voice. It brought the shadow of a smile to Riddick's lip for a brief touch.

"Yeah. I'll be right next to you the entire time. You think I'm going to let one of the beasts in here touch you without me there to make sure he doesn't try something?" His large hand rested briefly on the top of her head. "Get ready to go, Spook."

With a grin, she threw herself down on the pair of cots, reaching beneath to the cold little box. Once it was firmly in hand, she turned back to him, smiling, albeit nervously.

He watched her, that ghost of a smile lightly kissing his mouth again.

"You ready?"

She only nodded in return, her hands tightening around the box, hovering at his side.

"Y-you know where to find him?" His turn to nod.

"Unless he's moved since yesterday. C'mon." Riddick moved slowly at first, easing out into the dark corridor, his eyes near glowing in the blackness. He could feel the warmth of her, so close behind him. She wasn't even a full step behind.

Around them thugs were starting to stir, the ones who were going to wake were, and the ones who weren't would be discovered shortly. He slowed for a short step when he heard her falter, then again picked up his speed.

Twists and turns, a labyrinth of murky shadows, echoing darkness. Footsteps behind them, but only for short periods of time. Either not really following, or else they recognized their quarry and better judgment reared its head. Each time the footsteps resonated through the corridors Spook would move a little quicker, step a little closer, breathe a little faster.

At one point Riddick reached back, slipped his arm around her waist. He pulled her up beside him, growling low in his chest, a harsh sound, but with a strange note, almost a crooning note. The smaller body of Spook relaxed a little against the crook of his solid arm. He gave her a quick squeeze and then released her.

The corridors continued in echoing infinitum, turn upon turn, until Spook had no way of keeping track of where they were. They had left her mental map long ago.

Then light spilled into the passage, blinding and white.

It spilled, incandescent, from a single room accompanied with an odd scent that set her hair on edge.

Riddick motioned to the door with his head when she looked up in askance.

"Doc" was shorter than Spook had pictured. He stood in the glaring light of his self appropriated office, nearly a full head shorter than her. His pale hair was wild and matted, and a washed out straw color that did nothing to help the corpse-pale complexion of his nearly translucent skin. Watery eyes stared at them when they entered, sallow and near colorless. His face was nearly ugly, with a weak chin and long nose. His whole body gave the impression of a plague victim, waifish and gaunt. He wrung long, slender, spidery hands continuously, the long nails clicking together.

Riddick shielded his eyes from the flooding light. Spook cringed closer to the huge man, a near silent whimper escaping her, her eyes wide.

The room was small, about nine feet square. On a small metal table were shining blades, all remarkably, impeccably clean. Beside the table was the only other piece of furniture in the room. A cot. A cot stained an odd brown color.

A cot stained with old blood.

The scent of which permeated the room, mixing with an undercurrent of pain and adrenaline.

Spook inched closer to Riddick.

The little man edged away from the pair, his eyes focusing on Riddick's bronzed arms, where the muscles rippled as he reached casually for Spook.

"Show the man the box, Spook."

The little metal box appeared in her hands again, and the lid lifted. The diminutive man leaned forward, vapid eyes brightening as he took in the contents. He took a small step closer, then another. Spook snapped the lid closed as Doc reached one long finger towards the Menthol Cools.

"Ah ah. You work first, Doc. You know how this works. I hold the box." The massive caramel colored hand took the box from Spook's slender grip. "You fix her up with the Shine. There's at least 25, probably more. You get paid when I'm sure of your work. You get me?"

Doc's head bobbed on its spindly neck, the watery eyes fixed on the box.

"If the lady would take her place on the cot." The voice was reedy, hissed rather than spoken. His lower teeth showed prominently when he spoke.

"You ready Spook?"

"I-I think I-" Riddick's hand closed on the back of her neck. Light flared before her eyes for a moment, then darkness wrapped around her.

"She doesn't make it, you don't ever cut again. And it'll take a long time for me to let them find the first bits of you. Keep that in mind."


	13. Chapter Thirteen

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Was the world supposed to spin like that? She couldn't remember ever feeling it before, but all her recent memories featured the strange spinning, as well as the unbearable pain.

Had it always been there, with the spinning? The pain that seared through everything? Sure, the first time she'd been knifed hurt worse, but this pain… The pain was a throbbing ache, like someone was slowly, intently gauging her eyes out. The pain blocked all that came before its forceful presence.

She heard a soft mewling, something small terrified and hurt. It echoed dully through her ears. A sound that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. A soft sound. A quiet, pitiful sound, it's wretched tones speaking volumes. A pathetic sound, like a wounded kitten. The sound kept coming, and it seemed to get louder as the world spun faster and smote her again and again, sending sparks through her aching skull.

It was her.

The realization took a moment to fully dig its way into her poor brain, smarting with the ache of the burning in the front of her skull.

It just made her whimper and sob louder.

Then arms, strong and sure, hard but yielding, closed around her. They drew her to a broad, firm chest. She felt breath stirring her hair, and one powerful hand flexed against her back. The chest thrummed with that low growl, with that foreign note.

She buried her face against him, her shoulders shaking.

"I know. Hurts. Today's the worst. It'll be better tomorrow. Should be healed up in about four weeks. Then you'll be able to see again." She only whimpered. The arms tightened about her in a strange motion of tenderness. "Lemmie know if you think you're gunna throw up. That's not a good sign. If you're getting nauseous then Doc fucked up. You get nauseous, you tell me, he dies." He felt her attempt to nod, her cheek shifting against his chest. "Good girl, Spook. Try to rest." He hesitantly rested a hand on her head, shifted his arm around her a little.

She slept, at least for a little while.

And when she woke, Riddick was there, with a soft touch from his heavy hand to soothe her. Time was even less recognizable to her as she faded in and out of sleep. She had no idea if she slept for hours, or even the night. She would slowly come awake, and immediately feel his idle touch, like a man with a favorite dog.

Often she could smell the peculiar dust of the books, hear the sound of pages turning. His hand then would be very idle, just resting on her hair. He would simply keep reading, keep turning the pages in a steady rhythm. There was even a time when she woke up to feel him against her back, his arm heavy over her ribs, his breath stirring her hair in a slow tempo, the hard muscled chest rising and falling with the sluggish pace.

He was asleep. The Big Bad was wrapped around her, asleep. And she knew that if she moved he'd wake up. And if she stayed still, it would wake him up because it was unnatural. She shifted her shoulders a little, and the breath paused in the intake, the heavy arm flexing, tightening. She felt him sit up, then reach for something, then pages again turning as she drifted back to sleep.

Next she woke to find him seated beside her, a dish in his hands that he carefully pressed into hers. The metal was gently warm.

"Snagged me an errand boy. He brought the food. I never left your side. Now eat, Spook." She heard the popping of joints. Either his shoulders or his neck, she guessed, from the way he shifted. She could feel his eyes boring into her, waiting for her to obey. She carefully scooped a little of the contents onto her fingertips. "It's safe," the voice growled out at her hesitation. "I made the boy eat."

Thick and mealy, tasteless, but her body eagerly swallowed it. She needed it, she realized. It still took her a long time to eat. Each mouthful was quite deliberate, slowly lifted from the bowl to her mouth, small amounts of the thick gruel.

The bowl empty, she leaned back, curled up at the huge mans side. She could hear the pages turning, then they stopped. The bowl shuddered as Riddick's hand closed on it, his body shifting, preceding the soft clink of metal on cement as he set the bowl on the floor. He straightened, and the page turning continued.

"Read to me? I miss my books."

She felt the surprise through his leg where it touched her shoulder. He must have been staring at her. He grew very still, and she listened to his breath coming slow and even. In her mind she could see the expression, the steady stare of the silver eyes, the lowered brows while he tried to decide if she was mocking him in some way. The way his lips would be pursed, a tight frown.

Finally he shifted, coughed. Pages turned. "Something new ok? Was going to save it for a present once you were better." She nodded, shifting so that her cheek rested on his thigh, his arm on her shoulder. He lifted his arms for a moment, letting his thick fingers feel the fine texture of her dark hair, twisting a lock of it between his fingers for a long moment. With a sigh, his arm went back over her shoulder, and his husky voice began.

"O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea  
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free  
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam  
Survey our empire, and behold our home..."

The voice prowled over her, and she sighed, listening intently to every word. A few times she drifted off, between the soft caress of that voice and the idle stroking of his hand on her hair, but she woke up again, slowly resurfacing to the stalking tones of the deep gravel pit voice, the lazy tones of rock shifting to fall.

He had felt her drifting in and out of sleep for a while. Each time he'd slow in his reading, amazed at how anyone, especially a girl like her, could sleep in his presence. She was scared of everyone, and rightly so, but somehow she'd decided that he was the one to trust. He figured it was good for him, but still couldn't understand it.

And he couldn't shake the feeling that as soon as he managed to get that collar off all his carefully laid plans would come crashing down around his ears.

But he quickly banished that from his mind as she stirred again, waking quietly. He continued with the reading, feeling her shift against him.

Then came five words that were the last thing he ever expected to hear from anyone.

"I'm glad you're with me."


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

She winced when her eyes opened. For the first time in she knew not how long, her eyes were opened and the bandages removed. There were spots floating before her eyes, but they soon disappeared.

The world around her was flashes, ever-moving blurs of color. She rubbed at one eye with the back of her hand. The shapes remained blurred.

It was interesting. The blurs seemed to move as she did, their bright colors flickering. She stared intently at one shape, watching the reds and creams swirl over it, the glow around it that made it look like a light was shining brightly behind it. She moved closer to it as some of the blurring started to fade.

She squinted, a headache starting to grow from trying to sort out what the images defined by the shifting, dancing glows were.

Reds, bold pinks, patches of orange danced over the form. Whites glinted bright off a few edges, giving lines over the form. The reds mottled with darks, strange counterpoint to the blurry image, like an illusion of depth. The pinks flitted across the surface, even a touch of a golden green tone where she couldn't interpret the relevance of the colors. The brightest white were two burning white points, and she stared at them, watching the eerie blaze of color.

She lifted her hand, bringing it out in front of her. The same eerie colors danced over it, and only by knowing it could she make it out. She flexed her fingers a few times. The colors swirled, shifting with the play of the muscles and tendons. Her face broke into a smile, and she let out a short laugh, turning her hand, twisting her arm. The colors did follow a pattern. Slowly she began to recognize it.

She looked around her. That low blur, that must be the cots. She bent, and a touch confirmed the guess. Beside it she could make out the solid form of what turned out to be her stack of books. She opened the top cover.

The inside was covered with a strange scrawl that looked like insects. She touched the page with one finger. They were normal paper, at least for all she could tell by touch. She adjusted the distance between the page and her eyes a few times. She squinted. That seemed to help. She tilted her head. That helped even more. The book turned, and her hands again opened the worn cover.

"Supposing truth is a woman," She read. The smile grew. She could still read._  
_

_ Although it was silly to believe that I wouldn't be able to. Riddick can read, after all. It stands to reason that I'd be able to as well. And the text is actually easier than the books themselves were.__  
_

_ Riddick warned me that my vision would be blurry... Said there'd be spots, but that those would be gone fast. It seems like the main problem is, well, learning to see again. That'll just take time..._

She could see the doorway, bright and glaring, a fiery hole blazing against the muted deep blues of the wall. She pulled the long, straight blade of her shiv from her leg. The tones of the blade were so strange that she nearly dropped it. The glows were all wrong on the metal, so different from what they had looked like before. It was almost a matte color, with color exploding around the edges. It was a remarkable change.

Her eyes shifted back to the other shape, the large one in the middle of the room. The understanding there evaded her still. She moved closer. It was a tall thing, but she couldn't figure more than that. At the widest point, the colors were muted, dark blues, only an occasional point of crimson, except for a wide band of the glowing cream, red and pink. Her eyes traveled up to the embers of light again.

"You just gunna stare at me all day, Spook?"

She started, pulling away from the huge form. She could feel the chuckle from him, the waves of his amusement washing over her. She blinked. All of a sudden, his body was right against hers. His scent enveloped her as his arms slipped around her. He lifted her, then deposited her on the cots.

"No fair. Can't see yet." She sounded almost petulant, and she pouted at the blur that was Riddick.

"It'll come to you. You just need to stop trying so hard. Look for the familiar things." That earned him a scowl.

"I can't recognize the familiar things. It's all blurry, and funny shades. See the fact that I didn't even recognize you." She flopped onto her back, letting her breath out through her lips, settling her head on her crossed wrists. "But you want to know what bothers me most?" A deep encouraging sound rumbled through him. "It's been QUIET lately. We were able to get me Shined and healed without a hitch. No one's tried to kill me, or even LOOKED at me weird since you insisted I move into the cell block. I don't get it. Even you must have noticed it."

"Truth be told, Spook, I have." He sat on the edge of the cot, elbows resting on his widespread knees. "It's part of why I haven't wanted to leave you alone. I've made you into a handsome target by keeping you. I'm not soft, but I'd rather not see anything happen to you."

"Decided you like human contact, boss?"

"No. Just decided maybe you're not that bad, despite being a nosy little bitch." His large hand stroked her hair in a brief caress, taking the nasty edge out of the exasperated words. And her light touch fluttered briefly on the back of his hand.

"You're not soft, Riddick. Even the meanest dog wants a pack. Doesn't change him from being the biggest baddest son of a bitch out there. It's instinct."

"Instinct." Riddick shifted his seat so he could lean back against the wall beside the girl's head._  
_

_ I know all about instinct,_ he mumbled inside his head._ Instinct is that little voice inside my skull. Instinct is the taste of blood on my tongue, the feel of licking my shiv clean, the feel of the shiv sinking into the Sweet Spot. That's instinct. Instinct is blood and death and the feeling of life pouring over my hands. Instinct is cutting the life out of someone before they do the same to you. Instinct is pure gut, pure savage doing. Instinct was even the feel of some bitch beneath you. Instinct is taking what's your damn right as the Big Bad. Instinct isn't this weird feeling inside. It isn't instinct that gives this unfamiliar feeling that this girl seems to keep around me like a collar and leash. That's no damn instinct that I've ever heard of._

"Never had instinct telling me to keep a person around before."

"Humans are communal animals. It's why in here there're gangs. Humans need to have other humans around them." She tilted her head to one side, her teeth worrying her lower lip as she slowly spoke. "Even in here, where we're all so fucked up, the need for other humans is too great for us to overcome."

"Oh? Even hiding Rabbits?" He spat the words at her, looking down at her.

Her gaze looked up to him, her eyes wide and honest.

"Hiding Rabbits especially." And then, without a trace of a smile, "even if we express that instinct by attaching ourselves to the most terrifying predator in the entire realm of Hell and then wake up each morning amazed that so far we've been right."


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the othercharacters not seen in Pitch Black.

This definitely went against Riddick's admonishment of "be careful" as she left, of that she was certain. Nowhere in any definition of "be careful" could Spook find a clause supporting a side trip to find the source of a woman's screams. She pondered as she carefully slunk down through the dark. She was venturing into the unknown, into a horrible situation, off the path Riddick knew her to be on.

And no part of her could say with any conviction that she even wanted to find out what was happening to a woman to make her scream in a place like Slam. But still she found herself creeping down the hallway in the directions the screams had come from.

She had woken up, curled against Riddick's side like usual. He had been absorbed in sharpening his shiv. Amazing, that. Somehow she'd managed to sleep through the sound of metal on stone. For a while, she lay watching him, his calm, even movements as he dragged the blade over the chunk of what was either stone or cement held in his hand. But that sound eventually grew to be too harsh on her ears, and she wriggled off the bed around his huge roadblock of a body. She stretched experimentally, then bent to give her hardened cellmate a quick, tentative hug before turning to leave.

"Where you off to, Spook?" His voice caught her, pinning her in the doorway. It was a cold growl, tinged with a slight hint of curiosity. The husky tones twisted around her, wrapping like silken rope, holding her there against the wall. Her shoulder rested against the cement, her hand spread on the smooth surface. Glancing back, the embers of his silver eyes caught her, pinning her like a mouse before a snake. He stared at her, through her. He just watched her. There was no malice in the liquid eyes, no anger. They simply stared.

"I need to stretch my legs, Riddick. I've been cooped up in here since the Shine. Was going to go to the mess, walk a little." Her own eyes glowed, staring back into his from her tilted face, her brows shadowing the glinting silver. He just met her gaze, eyes cold, face inscrutable. She began to worry her lip between her teeth. "You going to come with? Keep an eye on me?" He stood, moved to pin her against the door frame, leaning in towards her. His hand seized her chin, lifting her face to his. It always made her a little scared, those deft movements, faster than any man his size, even in peak fitness, should be able to make. And the closeness. He never stopped any further than almost touching when he made those moves.

His hand was almost soft on her chin. He looked into her eyes, silver into silver. His thumb almost moved; she could feel the muscles twitch before he spoke. His jaw flexed, the moment of tension when his teeth closed tighter before the words.

"No. Got a rumor to look in to. You're going to be careful, Spook. Go to the mess. Come back." The bottomless eyes glinted in the dark. He was studying her face for a moment, the pools of liquid silver pausing on her eyes, her mouth, her throat. He took a step back from her. "Be. Careful." His hand left her face.

She nodded once, shining a furtive smile at him, shrugging herself away from the wall. With another shaky smile, the darkness of the hallways swallowed her.

It seemed somehow less terrifying now. She still slunk along the corridors, jumping at the smallest sound, but she no longer had to fear unseen death at every turn. Now she could see, and the faces watching from within doorless cells were visible. It was shocking how gaunt they looked when illuminated by the flickering tones of Shined eyes. A few of them had the glowing eyes of the Shine, but most simply looked scared as she moved past, watching her, listening as her steps faintly padded on the cold cement that carpeted the bowls of Hell.

The catcalls were strangely absent today. The cells that normally birthed the lewd commentary at her passing seemed abandoned, empty. The passage she walked smelled musty, stale, like no one had stirred there in a goodly time. There was dust. She smelled blood, dried, old. There must have been a bad fight. It would account for the abandonment of the route. No one wanted to be where Death had tread, lest those silent footsteps follow on their heels.

Her feet nearly hovered over the chill floor, the bare pads of them slapping silently as she inched down the hall. Too much time being afraid, being blind in the belly of the beast. Even now, her shined eyes gleaming, while she could plainly see the emptiness, her body stilled, even her breath slowing, near silent, her ears stretched to their fullest, yearning for the smallest sound that would send the rabbit back to her lair, to hide between the paws of the tiger.

But no sound touched her. A stain tinted the ground, from one wall nearly to the other; its dried edges still seemed to reach. Her feet danced along the edge of it, its smell accosting her nose. She stopped on the far side. A few days, she figured. About the time that she read again, perhaps one of the days that the errand boy fetched food.

She moved on.

A split in the trail, and Spook stared. The hallways were so different... She closed her eyes. Sniffed the air. A start in one direction, then a pause. From behind her came the faint sound of feet, moving away from her. The pale scent of food. Her teeth flashed in a swift smile. Her feet found a sure path down the hall, and she was sniffing like a dog. Her tongue darted to moisten her lips as she moved, ever following the hint of food.

True to memory, the light poured into the hallway. She cringed away from it for a moment, shielding her eyes. Squinting, she crept inside the packed room. The bowls, scrubbed nearly completely clean, were stacked near the door. Her pale hand carefully hefted one, feeling the solid, cold steel in her grasp. Quicksilver eyes, slitted against the light that seared into every corner of the room, scanned the Mess, hitting face after face. The guards near the gruel weren't men she recognized.

She slunk forward, shoulders rounded, eyes cast down, wary.

A few people, guards and inmates alike, glanced her way. Some, mostly inmates, murmured the name of her protector as they recoiled from her small frame; she could read his name plainly on their lips as if they had whispered it in her ear. The guards mostly watched her with the caution one gave a dangerous beast, eyeing the metal circling her throat with a guarded gaze, but they didn't offer any threatening motions when they allowed her to collect her allotment of coarse porridge.

Slipping into a corner, back to the walls, she wolfed down the food, licking at a few points in the bowl as she finished. Cagey, she skulked to the pile of dirty bowls to drop hers, then back towards the doorway. A few women seemed about to move towards her, but they stopped after a single step, their eyes falling as she looked towards them with half lidded silver eyes.

A feeling of discontent nagged at the back of her mind as she wound her way carefully through the tangle of corridors and passages in the dark. The darkness closed in around her, magnified a thousand fold by her rising nerves, flooded with her apprehension.

And then it came.

It was so sudden.

Echoing through the darkness, the scream seemed easily ten times as loud as it must have been. It ricocheted off the walls, spinning out of control around her, through her. It was a scream of terror, ripped from the throat of a woman.

Every muscle froze, listening to the sudden silence that stormed in the screams wake. She felt a tremor threaten in her thigh as she strained to listen in the dark, ears prying for any sound other than her heartbeat. The stillness loomed with uncanny menace, near deafness in the trail of the shattering shriek.

And then it sounded again, the clarion ringing out in shrill clear tones.

Without thinking, she spun to the sound, her bare feet striking the cement in quick strides, one hand resting on the wall, the other carefully pulling the blade from her thigh.

Definitely not being careful.

Definitely against her better judgment.

Ahead she could hear a whimpering. Low. Scared. Feminine.

She heard the low breathing of a man. Odd tone, hoarse. Either sick or breathing through a shattered nose.

She glanced around. The glow of the man was visible around the corner ahead.

Silence. Spook focused on silence.

She felt that cold stability start in her belly, spreading throughout her body. Her grip on the shiv shifted.

He had no idea she was there until the shiv tore through his throat, the hot ichor splashing in beaded droplets onto the woman.

Spooks eyes watched the body crumple, soundless, clutching briefly at his throat as the deep crimson spread over the floor, licking at her toes. Her head tilted, staring at the play of the shimmering over the oozing gore. The crimson scent filled the small room, the tang of copper striking deep in the back of the throat.

A flash of motion from the woman.

A swift strike, a lashed boot, carefully aimed.

Pain, blossoming darkness._  
_

_ Riddick's going to kill me._


	16. Chapter Sixteen

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

He frowned in the dark, his feet dully hitting the cement floor. He had followed several laid tracks, all to less than satisfactory results. The frown turned into a deep scowl, his eyes blazing in the dark corridor as he carefully skulked his way back to the little cell he shared with Spook. He ran a heavy calloused hand over his head, feeling the harsh grain of growing hair.

Everything was still so quiet.

A few fights had broken out in areas he'd been passing through, but they were quite minor. Nothing more than scuffles between starving, weak, scarred curs too stupid to recognize what a threat the big bad was when he slunk past. There was a small crimson stain on his arm, a testimony to the one fool who had possessed the audacity to collide with him during one of those fights.

But his trails so far had all gone cold, dead in the silent bowels of the deep. Stale tracks, silent rumors. A whole hold full of tons of nothing. His feet found their way towards home, following the back roads, the long ways. Habits were your enemy in the stygian pit.

His lip twitched. He longed to snarl. His hands twitched, fingers itching to feel the cool curve of his shiv handle resting against his palm. His nostrils flared in the stagnant gloom, sucking the subterranean, earthen air deep into the broad chest. He tasted the stale air, rolling it over his tongue with the next breath.

Something wasn't off, but wasn't right either. Like a smell too far out of range, too faint to be properly noticed, it pulled at the corner of his mind, setting off alarms in the recesses, where impulse whispered and nature coiled its grip around nurture, crushing silently, strangling in the dark.

He slowed, slinking forward, one hand on the wall, his shiv balanced carefully in his thick fingers. The handle was cool, heavy in his hand, and the chill metal reached into his soul, stilling the clamor of the nagging unknown, that strange something he couldn't place. The familiar weight stilled his mind. It sent its soothing grip deep within him. The familiar feel conjured the memory of the heat, the smell of copper, the quieting of the cruel nagging of his soul that came with the sweet bitterness of blood.

He hung in the inky pitch of the hallway outside the gaping maw of the cell he shared with the small woman. Sure as the eternal darkness of Slam, Spook's scent kissed the area, faint and fading, creeping shyly from within the cell. The musky scent, like some long forgotten warmth, lightly caressed him, filling his thoughts for a brief moment.

But the scent wasn't fresh.

It was a few hours old.

She should have returned. She should be inside, curled up with one of her precious books, pouring over the well known words like a familiar lover. She should be laying there, the book resting under those long hands. She should look up when he entered, tensed for that moment of panic, then sag when she recognized him. There should be that brief touch of light behind the Shine.

That mysterious trust.

But instead he paused in mid step, listening intently, scenting the air like the beast Hell had done so much to forge him into.

No other scent. No sounds.

He moved within the confines of the little cell.

The cots lay empty.

The books were stacked carefully where they had been when she'd left for the mess.  
  
Peter and Wendy. That one was good. But perhaps _The Corsair_... The prose of Byron again. And it was dark, epic... He thumbed through the book, growled, tossed it onto the cots behind him.

_ Where was she?  
_

The cell was exactly four strides across beside the cot. He had counted it several times.

His lips pulled away from startling white teeth in a snarl.  
  
She couldn't have figured it out, could she? She hadn't been acting different... I've been careful not to let her know. She can't know. Impossible.

He paused in his steps near the door, peering out, mercurial eyes slitted.

_Where is that little rabbit?_

Hands planted firmly on the doorposts. He leaned his broad shoulders through the maw of the door.

He inhaled sharply.

Dust, damp, cement, metal.

Human sweat, blood, death.

He strode out, listening to the silent echo about him. The slight movement of the air caressed his bronzed skin. He moved off down the corridor, carefully listening, placing his feet near silent on the cold floor, his boots thudding dully on the harsh, stained cement.

Darkness rolled over his broad shoulders. It writhed against him as he passed, trailing shadow fingers along the stubbed cheek, staring deep into the silvery glow of the Shine before recoiling. The empty dark of Slam spread before him, and somewhere deep within it hid his quarry.

_Where would she go? Does she really think I won't hunt her down? Has she forgotten who I am? What I am? That little rabbit's made her last mistake... there's not a soul alive who betrays Richard B Riddick and survives.   
_

_ Not even that little rabbit._

A feeling nagged at the back of his mind, drawing him along in the tight dark of the passages of Hell. He paused at the splits of the halls, and that strange pull would draw him one direction. His nostrils flared in the gloom, sucking in the musky-scented air.

_ I trusted her. I trusted her, let her live, let her stay so close to me. And now she runs away. Runs off into Slam without any thought.  
_  
He paused at another intersection, peering into the eerily glowing darkness. He glowered down the passages, scowling as he sought his way. Then again, that nagging feeling deep in his mind, the clamor of instinct. His feet chose to follow the passage to the right. The corridor flowed past him as he moved, his body sliding through it's stalking gait, moving like a serpentine beast out of a fairy tale on its way to steal the maiden away to her death in the mountain cave.

A few more turns, his body knowing the way without direction from his mind.

Then he stopped.

Ahead was light.

Around him was her heady scent, that low, teasing smell, taut with the flavor of sweat, salt, and the silent musk of her body. The scent was a quiet, embracing sort, and it wrapped itself around him, binding him within its gossamer touch before he fully noticed it.

_ I protected her. I looked out for her. I got her the Shine. I watched over her while she healed. Without me she would be dead or worse.  
_

_ She owes me now, and for this I'll take my payment.  
_  
He slowed, his feet touching silently on the floor as he flowed forward, reaching behind him to draw out the shiv.

Twisting around her smell was the heavy, dirt and sweat scent of men, the smells of violence, blood. Metal. Ozone.

Guards as well as inmates, then.

But was she still in there with them?

Light flickered from around the corner. It sputtered, danced, glowed with an orange sheen. The murmur of several voices crept about the corridor, echoing slightly.  
_  
I'll find her, and may whatever powers exist have mercy on her, because I'm not going to.   
_

_ And then we'll see if her blood is as sweet as the rest of her._

_  
_   



	17. Chapter Seventeen

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

And a special thanks to Bear, who gave me a great hand with the dialogue. claps for Bear Couldn't have done it without you!

(Bear, when officially thanked, responded with "I am not doing it for any recognition hun...I did it for you and for the fun of the character.")

He crept forward.

The voices became more plain. He could hear her, her words muffled, angry. Someone was laughing, a low chuckle with no hint of pleasantry in it. A curse was spat, and a few laughs were joined in one.

Firelight flickered brighter as he inched forward. He could smell the char of the burning wood, the smell of heated metal, the press of sweat and flesh. The bitter tang of bodies in close quarters. The smell of old blood, and of new scars.

The peculiar reek of ozone, so particular to the shocksticks and the gauges of guard issue. All nickel-slick and oiled, but still stinking of charred air and burnt metal.

And that soft, yielding scent of her. Laced with fear, that invasive scent wrapped around his senses.

The cement was harsh where he leaned his bronzed shoulder against it. He stilled his breath, staring at the opposite wall with his cold, unblinking eyes. His heartbeat sounded in his ears, creating a staccato backbeat to the clamor within the room.

He could make out four voices above the rest, and those voices were all male. Young voices. Voices deepened with mixed emotion. The baying of young hounds fearing the retaliation of the leader of their pack.

And they were all making suggestions at once, none of which sounded like they'd be at all pleasant for the female on the receiving end.

And then another voice.

A voice harsh and ragged, like it had been torn from the throat then carelessly sewn back in. A voice cruelly masculine. It was cold, and the lips it slithered from were obviously pulled into a sneer. The voice dripped of old pains, of vengeance, of hatred. It sounded with the clarion cry of one on the verge of triumph despite its tattered rags.

And in the ruined harsh of the voice shone tattered remnants of what had once been splendor.

When that voice crawled out, low, ragged, harsh, nearly lost in the shadows and flickering firelight, the others fell silent.

"Come now. This well-ridden little filly is our guest. I don't deny she's clean limbed. A real goer with good wind if ya know the type gents... and you can guarantee she's been to the races more than a few times. Why look at the saddle marks....and the quirt scars. But she IS our guest gentleman. Or at least she is for the moment. It's on account of her that the fine upstanding bastard Richard, and a fine example of why the name is often shortened to dick, but anyway it's her doing that the distinguished Dick will be joining us. And once that's done with, she belongs to Mister Talbot here. Maybe when he's done he'll be kind enough to share her, let you pass her among yourselves, try out some of those charming ideas of yours"

With a classicly aristocratic motion he pressed a stained cloth already spattered with blood to his lips, patting the ruins of his mouth as if he held the finest of silk kercheifs. " I must declare gentleman, I had NO idea that some of you could BE so creative. Why even in the depths of my imagination I don't think I would ever dream of some of the things I've heard planned for the little filly there." A dry chuckle turned into a rasping gurgle as the ripped and shattered remains of his throat temporarily exerted themselves.

"Now of course don't expect any of those charming ideas to impress her much. It's my understandin' that he's had her squealing and saying the filthiest words. But I digress. I am fairly assured that once you wind this little tart up she'll go for days and possibly teach all of you gentlemen a lesson or two.

"Until then, you don't get to do any more than look at her."

Riddick heard a muffled curse, Spook's small voice. The hoarse, brutalized voice laughed again, a bitter, cold sound, scales over stone. He dared a fast look into the room. He couldn't see the speaker, or where Spook was. What he could see was the nervous shifting of six burly men dressed in the shabby drab rags of inmates. They were watching something inside the room, towards him but off to the right. Fire was crackling in a metal barrel in the center of the room.

He heard the shuffle of bare feet, boots, flesh being struck by an open hand. A sharp, short cry of shocked pain and anger.

"Such spirit! No wonder that dog was so quick to cover you. Do tell though, dear, what exactly did you do to make that hound whimper and slink away like that when he was done? Or do you think it was just a slightly tardy sense of shame when he realized how low he'd stooped? But no matter -" The voice broke into a cough. "I fear all of this excitement has made me horribly fatigued. Please entertain yerselves while I partake of a slight restorative. A fine ages old southern bourbon would do." The only vaguely human profile turned in what could only have been a pose of reflection, or nostalgiac revelry. "But in light of my current less than sartorial state I must settle for a mundane nap."

Riddick swiftly bent his head, a momentary glance into the room. Something stirred at the edge of the doorway, but not far enough into view. He swore softly. Whoever it was in there, whatever it was they wanted from him, Spook surely wouldn't have leapt into any deal that would have handed herself over to Talbot. There was no way around that. He had seen firsthand the cautious fear she regarded that man with.

He frowned, shifting against the wall, leaning heavily on one solid shoulder. This was not good. He closed his burnished eyes. He listened.

There were at least a dozen pairs of feet shifting within the room.

He could feel the sticky itch of starting sweat in the stubble of his shaved scalp. The air was close and hot, clinging to his skin. The fire in the room ahead crackled, it's pale light flickering in the stare of squinted silver eyes. It glinted off the cold face, casting the etched lines of the emotionless mask that was Richard B Riddick into deep shadows.

He crept along the wall; the concrete lay its harsh caress on his shoulder as he slid along, a serpent in the dark. His feet touched the floor silently. His hand rested on the wall. His eyes glinted like frozen steel in the wan light.

The men in the room were laughing again; the squeal from Spook was nearly drowned in the harsh fall of voices. Riddick's cold eyes grew impossibly chill, the light in them dulling to only a malicious glint deep beneath the quicksilver pools.

He didn't know just how many men lurked within the room.

But the small, innocuous creature upon whom all his plans rested was in there, bait in a trap that had all the chance of being his last one sprung._  
_

_ What a mess you've gotten me into this time, Spook._ The deep eyes narrowed still further. _All the time, all the work put into you, be damned if it isn't more expensive to let you hang in the noose you caught yourself in. Stupid Rabbit. How'd you ever last this long?_

The low light flickered off the silver eyes. The darkness swallowed him.

"Darlin'," that voice again. Riddick moved still closer. "If your pet killer persists in this ridiculous tardiness, I may be forced into actions which I'd have cause to regret later."

He was close enough now to hear the girl's response; despite the overwhelming odds against her, the small girl spat at the speaker. Again that deep, harsh chuckle, the coughing.

Khyron.

"Ah, the brash, confidence of youth ." An almost affectionate or avuncular chuckle sounded unnatural in that torn throat. The resounding slap however was much more appropriate to the surroundings. Even though he could not see inside Riddick could well picture Khyron savagely tangling his fingers in Spooks now tangled dark hair. Her cheek turned to where the sadistic monster could view his handprint with that particular satisfaction he rarely let show through his cultured veneer. "So spirited, so defiant...so confounded stupid girl. I would think that even if you were no more than his playmate Riddick would have chosen a filly with more sense." Another resounding slap followed by a flurry of what could only be punches and kicks urged him forward.

Riddick moved still closer, the darkness of the corridor clinging to him as he passed, a spiders web of inky black. He could see Spook now, held in the strong, cruel hands of a burly guard, her arms pinned to her sides. She lashed out with one of her bare feet at the figure before her, the bent shape of a man leaning heavily on a crutch. Another in guards uniform, the guard she avoided, Talbot, struck her across the face.

"And now, if you youngsters outside would be so kind ? Y'all escort our guest of honor inside to where I can feast my eyes. Why I declare I NEVER thought we'd get to the entertainin' portion of the evening!"

Riddick started. A shock stick struck the back of his neck. Then another blow as he turned. The darkness flashed, flared, dissolved into spots as he sank to his knees, supporting himself on the knuckles of one hand, his shiv ripping out in an arc as another blow from the vicious stick left him near vomiting from the pain, his mind snarling as it dug into conciousness, refusing to slip.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, but I promise to return him when I'm done. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.  
  
Sorry about the delay - Final Exams insert shriek of terror here are upon us in full force.

Spook thrashed against the harsh hands of the guard, a rim of white encircling the bottomless silver in her eyes. They were fixed on the vaguely struggling man, the convict whose eyes flickered as he fought the blows of the shocksticks. Fingers dug into her flesh as she fought to wrench herself loose. Her bare heels drummed back into the legs of the man. Clawed fingers occasionally managed to mark the arms of the guard, forcing him to shift his grip.

Dark marks covered her cheek, the skin bared by the open v of the neck of her dingy shirt. Her eyes rolled, her teeth were bared. Heavy banding of deep mottled purples and near-blacks banded her pale arms. There were stains on her hands, and the guard was cursing softly, holding her arms in a vicious grip, midway down her forearms, causing the flesh to bulge slightly above his tight hands.

The crackle of the shocksticks echoed in Riddick's ears as he stared at the slender girl. His knuckles clenched on the harsh ground. His arms and shoulders rippled, tensing as the next blow fell, followed by a swift kick in the ribs that sent him falling onto his side fully into the room. Again the searing kiss of the shockstick sent arching spasms along his spine. Blood dripped from his lip.

His cold eyes were fixed now upon the hunched form, drinking in a figure that was uneven, curled, leaning heavily on a cane. Again his thick hands tightened, knuckles leaving trails of red on the rough-poured concrete. The nearly-human figure limped towards him a few halting strides, bringing a face that quite possibly was once that of a man into view. The nose had been shattered. Ugly scars ran across his forehead, cheek, across where once there had been an eye. The shoulders were uneven, giving the form a crumpled look, like a rag doll propped upright. The left leg was twisted, shorter than the other by a matter of inches, and bent at mid thigh and at the shin.

Again the wracking pain of the shockstick.

And the quasi-man raised one hand, a hand clean and pure, unmarked by the ravages that maligned the rest of the warped body. The blows paused. The creature reached within the loose clothing, then cast something forward.

A shard of metal rang across the floor, coming to rest before Riddick. Then another. Then the hissing skitter of bone; a handle.

Three pieces of a shattered shiv. It had once been a straight, double edged blade. There were dark splotches of old blood on it. The bone was marked with it - one whole side permanently stained a deep, dark rusted brown.

Silvered eyes stared dully at them, then back up at the distorted man.

The hand lowered.

Again the shocksticks descended, singing their vicious hiss and crackle.

Riddick arced under the onslaught.

Squealing with emotion, Spook again railed against her captor, fighting the brutal grip, her muscles straining against his near-casual hold.

Harsh, broken laughter rang joyous as the blows descended upon Riddick, the twisted man shaking with glee. He leaned on his cane, his single eye glinting with mirth, his malformed mouth in a mocking parody of a grin, baring shattered teeth._  
_

_ "Khyron!"_ A bellow, an echoing roar. The huge man exploded from beneath the blows, his hands catching those assaulting him about the throats, slamming them together, striking them into the wall with a sickening, squelching noise. The heavy booted feet struck the cement in a savage beat that carried the man forward, into a forming wave of bodies as the deformed man shrieked. Riddick's deep voice rang out over the tide of bodies. _"I know you, Khyron!"_

Spook's cry was drowned in the uproar. She struggled harder, lashing back with one heel. Beneath her foot she felt a sickening crunch, felt something give. The grip loosened with a howled curse, then a snatch at the collar around her throat.

The band of metal tightened as his thick hand wrapped around it. Her breath caught as she was yanked backward, the metal biting deep into the soft flesh. Another hand laced into her hair, dragging her face close to that of Talbot. His breath was stale, sour, as he hissed viciously at her, pulling her towards the doorway along the wall, her struggling body crushed against his chest. He had loosed her hair, wrapping that arm instead around her throat, the other still gripping the collar.

"Not smart, bitch. You hurt me. I'll make sure that you die slowly while I do whatever I want with you. You're gunna be all mine"

Spook flailed with her arms, her hands striking dully at his thighs as he warded the blows until they stopped.

She lifted one hand, then the other. Clutched in her hands were canisters, cylindrical, the grips held tightly in her hands. The pins clattered to the ground.

"Let me go, Talbot." She could barely hear her own voice above the noise of the fighting, His breath came even sharper as his pain-fogged mind registered what she held.

"That piece of dogsmeat doesn't stand a chance, bitch. Are you really willing to do this? To play this game?" but the arm loosened a fraction.

"Tell me what I have to loose. These are, unless I miss my guess, phos. I let go, we take half the people in this room with us to burning hellish death. Now let me go. You're too much of a coward to face your end." The arm released her neck, then the hand unwrapped from the collar. The shrieking voice of Khyron took on a new pitch. "Now be a good boy, Talbot. Pick up the pins." Spook stared at him, her face hard as marble, eyes wide, nostrils flaring with rage. The guard bent, his hands reaching for the pins as her knee snapped upwards, connecting solidly with his temple. Then she turned to the brawl, where the men all were swarmed into a throng, the explosives held high, where all could see.

With expressions of cautious fear, those not directly involved in the massacre moved away from the carefully stepping girl. Finally she stood before the misshapen body of Khyron, staring defiantly into his remaining eye.

"Call them off, Khyron. You failed. You call them off, I don't use these to make you even more ugly." For a long moment the stared at one another.

Slowly Spook brought her hand before her. One finger at a time, she began to remove her hand from the grip.

"One little piggy," her little finger.

"Two little piggies," her ring finger.

"Three little piggies," her middle finger. "You're running low on piggies, Khyron. What's it going to be? 'Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice.'" Cold hatred touched her voice as she stared with disdainful silver eyes, the explosive between them.

The voice rose from the shattered body, calling out to the men, a shaking order to cease and desist.

Spook gave a half bow, her eyes still fixed on the ragged face. "Always a gentleman, Khyron."

She backed away, closing her fingers around the grenade, her chill eyes still locked on Khyron. Her knees bent, and she stooped to blindly lift the huge man against her side.

She could smell the blood before she felt it, the hot flood that seeped into her skin, into her clothes. She couldn't hear him breathing. She barely felt it. She carefully began to heave his massive form backwards, one grenade under his arm, the other out in front of her, towards Khyron.

Khyron kept gesturing his men back, staggering back in tiny steps.

The doorway came within the edge of Spook's vision.

A smile crept over her face.

"It's been a pleasure, boys, but we really got to run." She shoved Riddick to the side, both hands lashing forward, the explosives arcing neatly towards the fire as she followed Riddick's fall behind the wall.

Her shoulder screamed its protest on the landing, the shirt tearing on the cement, the skin grating harsh as a column of white hell echoed the near-blinding blast of pure sound that her body instinctively fled before. The white seared behind her closed eyes. The very ground threatened to break apart and swallow her whole. If she cried out, she didn't know. Her ears were ringing with the echo of the damage.

On shaky legs she managed to rise, then bent to lift the limp form of the ragged tatters of Riddick.

"Good bye, Khyron."


	19. Chapter Nineteen

I do not own Pitch Black. I did not create Pitch Black. I do not own Riddick. I am simply borrowing him for my own amusement. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation.

I am guilty of creating Spook. I did create the supporting members of this story, and all characters not seen in Pitch Black.

He could feel a metal wall against his shoulder. He could faintly feel metal beneath the blankets that were wrapped around him. Air stirred idly about him, flowing past him, from above. There was heat all around him, the blankets heavy on him, but he felt chilled. Sweat dampened his skin, but he shuddered.

A hand laid itself on his cheek. He tried to fend it off but he could barely lift his arm.

"Lay still."

He knew that voice, but it was different.

It was bolder, the words tossed carelessly into the air, without worry of being overheard. It was stronger, too. All the timid tones were gone.

"Spook?" Was that pale croak really his voice? It didn't sound like it, but his chest ached with the words that clawed their way out of his throat. The blurry glow above him hushed him, the fingers moving in a soothing caress on his face.

"Now is the time for you to rest. You need your strength to fight the fever." He felt himself slide backwards, away from consciousness as he struggled against the inexorable force.

Spook leaned over him, frowning until his face relaxed, still cold, expressionless, but without the tightness around his eyes. Her hand remained on his harsh, stubble covered cheek, feeling the heat of his skin. Her eyes glinted in the low light.

Footsteps echoed down the narrow shaft to where she sat beside the huge man. Her face lifted, staring down towards the sound with a cold, curious mask over her face. The steps faltered, then faded into the distance. She turned back to the still form.

A crimson and rust colored rag, damp with water from the bucket beside her lightly ran over his skin, cleaning the patches of drying blood from the tawny skin, revealing deep pools of black under the surface of his skin, tracks of neat, even stitches on fresh wounds, lines of red, puckered stitches that crossed over older, pale lines of healed wounds.

Her fingers lightly pressed at the stitched, red marks, and she nodded to herself. At least they were clean.

Her eyes wandered over the bared skin, flitting from blackened patch to blackened patch, seeing here the actual outline of the fist that had made a certain mark, there a shape that was unmistakably a boot.

He had cried out once when she was moving him, when she had had her arm around his chest and he had come awake. Probably something broken.

She sighed, pulling the blankets back over his torso, nestling them gently around the broad shoulders.

She gazed down at him for a moment longer, then slipped away to the air duct out to the body of Slam.

The grate easily slipped back into place, and swift feet carried her into the darkness. Riddick would easily sleep until long after she returned, but she feared leaving him alone for too long.

Her bare feet bade no sound in the darkness as she ran, and no one looked up as she passed. Even in the mess when she gathered two bowls of food; the inmates ignored her, the guards didn't look at her. The one with the ladle didn't seem to see her being there, even as he filled the two bowls.

And she fled back to the hidey hole, the bowls clutched in her hands, only to lift the metal bucket of water and slip away with it to the showers she considered hers, to watch the red water swirl over the floor before the warm water filled the bucket. She paused, her hand on the door.

"Did you hear?" The voice was muffled by the door. "That plot of Talbot's backfired. His grenades went off. I told him not to take them... Apparently something went wrong. He, those two lackeys of his, and around 30 inmates. All dead."

"Really? I heard they were hunting Riddick. No way in hell they were gunna catch him. He's near untouchable in here. Always knows when there's a trap, and always gets away. I lay my bets on that."

"My odds are that they were going after that mad dog, and he got them instead. But then, you never can trust the bastards in here. Coulda been one of the ones he was working with."

"Yeah, that freak from the med unit. The one Riddick put there, all messed up. What was his name? Chronos? Chiron? Something from mythology...Did you hear if that was true?"_  
_

_ "Did you hear?"_

The words came back to echo in her ears from a time long past._  
_

_ "Did you hear? That girl's the one who put Collins down. She did something to him when they were trying to bend her to the work. He shot himself. Right through his own skull. Only reason he's still alive, they say, is because of how bad he was shaking. Missed all the vital crap in his brain."__  
_

_ She could barely hear the voices through the metal between the cab and herself. The youthful voice of the one guard, the low, noncommittal grunts of the older one. She trembled against the metal wall, pressed tightly into the corner. She didn't want to hear this.__  
_

_ "They said he was beating her pretty hard..."__  
_

_ "Don't you be making the mistake of feeling pity for the bitch. Psi ain't human, Kurt. They're dangerous animals. They should all be put down, I says. But the higher-ups say they're useful to us for solving crimes when they get trained proper and know their place."__  
_

_ "Still. I don't think-"__  
_

_ "Of course you don't! If you thought for a moment you'd realize that that little girl back there pretty much killed one of the best men in the force, a man who's trained Psi for the last 10 years. I miss the days when the only animals we worked with were dogs. Least you always knew what they were going to do, and there wasn't public outcry if you killed one for being vicious, 'cause they didn't look like people.__  
_

_ "Slam'll break her down, or it'll kill her. It always does."__  
_

_ Slam. Kiran had heard that one before. Slam was where the worst of the worst went. Tri-system killing spree committers. Men who did horrible things to innocents after taking over government search ships and using the standard rights of those same ships to stop traders and cruise liners. All the mad dogs ever caught.__  
_

_ "but I am a person," she whispered. "really I am. I swear I am..." But only the darkness heard her._


	20. Chapter Twenty

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. Eventually. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the othercharacters not seen in Pitch Black.

The darkness was close and oppressive, even with the shine. Beside him, he could see the creamy glow of the girl, a damp cloth, stained red, clenched in her hand. His skin felt clammy and too small. His chest ached with every breath. He didn't try to move more than his head, and that was only to peer around him at the close metal walls. He stared up the tall ventilation duct, to where it ended at a grate and a slowly turning fan. The air flowed gently around them, but the blanket cut it away from his flesh. It moved down, around, through a duct near his feet.

He shifted to look better, pain searing through his body when he moved. He swore softly, barely more than a heavy breath. He glanced back at the still form of Spook, leaning against the wall, her head leaning back against the wall, slightly to the side. She didn't move. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, feeling the muscles scream against him, the pain course through him. His chest tightened painfully.

His own skin, was in a dark state of bruising, only the barest touch around the edges of the angry near black patches turning to the odd purpled green of fading. He raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his eyes, wincing. Pain thrashed through his arm as the corded muscles protested the move. He narrowed his eyes, gritting his teeth, bringing fresh pain from his jaw.

They must have really done a number on him. He could remember only the beginning... With a sigh that felt like a shiv in his chest, he closed his eyes._  
_

_ Spook, held tightly in the arms of that guard, her face covered in the red marks of blows, bruises of old s trikes. She had tried to warn him away with her cries. She had fought the stronger man, trying to reach him. Then blows, the pain, the fury, the redness that had taken him, the bloodlust that had swallowed him, fueled by his own hurt. Then everything disappeared into the pain and press of bodies, the smell of sweat and blood.__  
_

_ ...And Khyron. Khyron was out there somewhere. He'll be brooding over the fact that he hasn't succeeded in killing me... And no doubt he'll be looking for me._

His head tilted back onto the pile of rags she had placed there as a pillow. Not pleasant thoughts. Here he was, laying wounded, weakened, with only a girl to help him, while Khyron had somehow managed, from the little he remembered seeing between the shocksticks and the beating, managed to gain the help and support of the guards._  
_

_ But dwelling on it won't change what happened. Just got to be aware that the little fuck has the backing of the only people in here who can actually make things rough on me._

The shoulders twitched, the outward sign of the huge man shaking the cobwebs out of his mind, turning his honed senses outward, where the demons of hell awaited his attention. The shaved head turned. The air rushed into him as he sniffed, testing the air.

There was the smell of antiseptic strong in the tight space. Something in the water bucket between them. She must have added something to it for cleaning him while he slept. Sweat also stung his nose. His and hers, stale. Soap. She must have bathed herself since he had fallen. The soft, gentle, musky scent of her skin. The metallic tang of blood. The itchy scent of the harsh wool against his skin. The ever so faint scent of dust from outside the shaft. The cool scent of machine oil, from the fan slowly turning above them. Detergent. He glanced to see a slightly mussed but clean new shirt folded beside him. He stretched his senses further.

He heard the dull echo of his own heartbeat. Then the soft tread of people. They were walking past the grate. Had she been forced to go to ground in a populated area because of his injuries? Or were they looking, searching the bowels of Slam in hopes of finishing him off? The steps weren't slow, so either the owners weren't searching or the area had been swept before.

Her breathing, steady, gentle, almost sighing.

He looked back at her.

The bruises on her face were fading to a greenish blot, mottled with some purples. He could see more bruised flesh where her shirt parted at her throat, before the buttons were fastened. The bruising must cover a good portion of her flesh - there were edges of it on her shoulder, visible through a ripped seam and on her wrists after the ragged cuffs. The rest of her pale flesh seemed pink, like she had been seared by something and the skin was inflamed, healing._  
_

_ How much did they hurt you, little rabbit?_

He reached one hand towards her, wincing slightly, wanting to see how bad the damage was to her pale flesh.

"Nice to see you awake, Riddick." She didn't move. Her eyes remained closed, but she smiled after her words.

"How long have you been awake?" His voice was more harsh than usual, the sound cracked, bruised like his flesh. She just opened her silvered eyes, shrugging. Those deep eyes, a bottomless pool frozen over in midwinter, fixed his with their steely gaze. Was that how his eyes looked to her?

"The food is still warm, if you're hungry." She made a vague gesture towards a bowl he now noticed by the bucket. Her head tilted back, her hair spilling over her shoulder when she shifted a little, off one hip and onto the other, as she leaned against the wall, curling her legs beneath her. The deep, dark, brooding eyes closed again.

"Food. You left me here?"

"You weren't going anywhere, with the fever and being unconscious. And no one was about to find you." Her voice sounded different. It matched her eyes, sullen, cold. She was staring at him again. "You need to eat, anyway. Keep up your strength so that the wounds and fever don't kill you." Then her face softened, a warmth entering it that didn't touch her eyes. "I was worried, Richard B Riddick. I thought I was going to lose you. Now eat." She had the bowl in her hands, holding the worn metal out towards him until he nodded once, taking it into his own large hands. Her fingertips brushed his as she handed it off.

Her storm-grey eyes gleamed in the dark as she stared intently into his face until he brought the first bite of the lukewarm gruel to his lips._  
_

_ And to think I thought this crap was bad when it was hot..._

"Khyron was behind it all." She nodded at his statement. "He'll be looking for me." To that she shook her head. "No?"

"No. Do you really think that he let me walk out of there with you? Or that I could have fought a number of men that brought the mighty Riddick to his knees and almost ended his infamous life?" She gave him a soft smile again. "No, we're still alive because Talbot was a fool. He brought grenades."_  
_

_ Blinding light, searing through her eyelids. The howls of terror, the stench of burning flesh, the searing scent of the unearthly flames. The shrieking, the agonized keening of men who were already dead. She sheltered the fallen form of her massive protector, her own small body shielding him from the heat.__  
_

_ She felt her skin tighten over her flesh. The light, the heat, accosted her tender body. She tightened her arms around the bleeding man, pressing her face into his raw flesh, murmuring quietly.__  
_

_ "don't you dare leave me. i'm not leaving you, don't you dare leave me. you hear me, Riddick? you come back to me."__  
_

_ Only a few men, coated in the white burning, stumbled from the room, swatting and rubbing at the fire in futile attempts to rid themselves of the burning. Their screeches only ripping their voices into shreds as the burning claimed them.__  
_

_ She only screwed her eyes shut, clinging to the broad body beneath her, tears leaking from between her lids, feeling his faint pulse against her cheek until she felt some pale shade of strength return to her shaking body.__  
_

_ She pushed herself to the side, resting for a moment on her knees, blinking, owlish, in the fading light in the corridor. Something was still glowing.__   
_

_ She glanced around, seeing first several still forms whose sizzling, charring odor identified as having been people, although whether guard or inmate was impossible to know anymore. And then she spotted the boots.__  
_

_ Riddick's boots.__  
_

_ The soles, the lower sections, were searing beneath a thin coating of the white, glowing, burning substance. A soft swear, then a word of thanks to whatever gods happened to listen to the forsaken prayers of condemned souls that the hell-sent flames hadn't covered any place she needed to touch in order to get the boots off.__  
_

_ And the boots were sent skittering down the hall, leavinf a fading trail of glowing white in their wake.__  
_

_ The fading glow of the phosphorous illuminated the form of a young girl stooping to lift the body of a man much larger than her. She was bent nearly double beneath his weight, but she half carried, half dragged him away from the flames._

"I thought I'd lost you." He looked up into the earnest face. "You've been laying there, in and out of fever dreams for almost a week, near as I can tell."

Riddick snorted. "Explains why I'm so hungry, huh." He cast the empty bowl aside, then let out a startled curse.

Spook had moved in close, her long fingers lightly trailing over the lines of neat stitches, then reaching for the antiseptic water, the wet cloth cold in the wake of her warm hand.

"What the fuck are you doing?" He snatched her wrist, his hand closing around it easily, pulling her up, her face inches from his, his eyes blazing. "That stings! I'm healing. I looked at them earlier. No need to be wiping that shit all over me again."

But she was chewing on her lower lip.

The rag was letting the liquid go in a cool trickle over his fingers, down both of their arms. It dripped off her elbow, the droplets making a little cold point on his thigh, making the skin tingle.

"Do you really need to be wiping that all over me? The fever is broken, little rabbit." His eyes met hers. "I'm not in danger of dying anymore. Besides, didn't you hear?" His face broke into a grin. "Ain't no trickeration in this whole damn place that can ex me out!"

She reached out her other hand to touch his face lightly, her fingers trailing over his jaw. "I must have missed that memo."


	21. Chapter TwentyOne

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

_ Amazing._

Riddick looked down at the still form where she was curled against his side, her ribs moving in the slow rhythm of the sleeping cadence of breathing. She stirred only slightly when he shifted, snorting before settling back into sleep. The bruises on her face were a sickly yellow now, though the section of her side still showed purple over her hip, at her lower ribs, where her shirt lay lifted by the shiftings of slumber._  
_

_ She survived so much. She stood up to them. She nearly died. Little Spook. Guess they can't kill you either._

His heavy hand, calloused from the shiv, invisibly stained with the blood of countless people, hovered over the bruise. The mark was larger than his hand, even with his fingers spread. It must have taken several blows, crossed over one another, to leave the vicious mark. It was spread evenly; no finger marks visible. Perhaps it had been made by several overlapping kicks. The marks fanned, slightly faded at the edge, over her slight belly, across the lean back where it barely could be differentiated from other bruises in varying states of discolor. Many of the blows covered her soft points; darkened patches, vicious bruises like the one beneath his hand, marked quite plainly over her ribs, her soft sides, the sweet spot snuggled up beside the lumbar vertebrae.

His eyes clouded, the thick brows stooping over the deep eyes. Lightning flashed in the bottomless silver. The dramatic lips pursed to a snarled line, the furrows etching down the strong nose. A low noise rasped at his throat.

The slight form stirred again, turning and rolling over into his chest, one thin arm settling over his thick barrel, fingers resting, tickling soft, at his shoulder blade. She murmured wordlessly, whimpered, pressed her face into his broad chest. The arm tightened slightly.

His heavy hand descended, the coarse skin lightly stroking her down soft hair, spreading it slightly where it fanned over his bicep, where her cheek rested.

Her eyes flitted behind lids glossed with the bruising of exhaustion._  
_

_ They yanked her out of the dark ship into bright lights, holding her by her hair, jerked up so her toes barely touched the floor. She whimpered softly, reaching up to grasp the thick wrist of the man, trying to support herself, clinging to the heavy hand, her hands barely touching before she was flung down, forward, crashing to the hard metal floor.__  
_

_ All around her was the stench of antiseptic, cleaning products. The metal floor reflected the rectangles of light from above in the scoured, scuffed surface. She watched as a drop of blood fell, then another, spattering on the metal. There was a tickling at her nose, like she was crying. She rubbed her arm against her face, scrubbing her nose. It came away streaked with crimson.__  
_

_ "You always like to damage them, don't you, Officer Kane?" There was a new man, a new pair of boots near her face. "Make you feel big? Like a real man? Tossing around these little Psi. I dunno why you bother." Strong hands took her arm gently, guiding her to her feet. His hand took her chin, tilting her head, turning it from side to side. "Not as much as you usually do. She a salvage job?"__  
_

_ "They haven't decided. Figure she'll learn her lesson in here, like the rest of them. Sink or swim, right?" The guardsman swaggered over to her, his black mustache only exaggerating his leer. "Don't go soft on this one, mind you. If she's salvage, she needs to break."__  
_

_ "We don't go soft here, Officer. They live or die on their own. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to get this one through processing." He held out his hand, receiving a metal board from the guard before steering Kiran down the hall.__  
_

_ "Inmate 892372 - Kiran Ivanova. Convicted of murder, assault, treason, subversion, larceny, unlawful entry, and the theft, mutilation, and damage of government property. Went for the grab bag, I see." He tapped his finger on the side of the pad, his eyes fixed on the report. She followed him down the corridor, glancing at the metal floor, the metal, doorless walls. She wrapped her arms around her, her feet sending echoes skittering up and down the hall. "Through that door. There are nurses there that will see to your physical checks and preparation."__  
_

_ Kiran almost bumped into his back, his stop was so sudden and her attention so fragmented. He sighed impatiently, gesturing again to the only door nearby, the first she had seen, his expression one of annoyance and boredom. She slipped inside, eyes downcast.__  
_

_ "Ah. 892372. You're later than we expected." The voice belonged to a woman; a large, matronly woman with arms nearly the size of Kiran's calves. She glowered over her half moon spectacles at the girl, tutting her tongue. "Biological age?"__  
_

_ "S-sixteen..."__  
_

_ The nurse grunted, grabbing the smaller girl's arm, dragging her over to a scale. "75 kilos. 1.63 meters. This way." A wall, plain, with an x on the floor before it. "We're going to take an ocular scan. For identification. Inmate 892372 - Kiran Ivanova, High Security Risk, 16 years biological, brown and brown. Guards to be aware that subject is dangerous and is to be treated with extreme caution, the use of force when deemed necessary. Repeat, HSR."__  
_

_ "**Data Loaded.**" A dull, precise, monotone from nowhere.__  
_

_ "This way."__  
_

_ Kiran frantically followed the woman, near trotting to keep up with the long strides of the corpulent nurse. Her wide eyes took in few of the almost nonexistent details of the rooms she was led through. There were tables, large metal slabs with restraint straps attached to them and glaring banks of lights suspended above them, trays of sealed, pale green pouches beside them. A red box with curving black triangles overlapping on the side, letters in several languages marking it plainly as "Sharps." The nurse held open another door, shooing the terrified girl inside a room where several other women in dingy grey and what might have once been cream colored clothing sat huddled together.__  
_

_ The women glowered at her from beneath sullen brows, stringy hair, and filth. Most were thin, and several had nasty scars, deep lines of purple or read, streaking their faces and visible skin. Several had fresh bruises. One gave her a vicious leer, revealing several missing teeth.__  
_

_ Another stared at her with cold, dead eyes, eyes that reflected the bright light from where they were half hidden, shrouded by lowered brows. That one just stared at Kiran, not moving, eyes fixed on Kiran's face, eyes frigid, a marble statue, her lanky hair swaying slightly with her breathing.__  
_

_ "This way, Ivanova. Move along. We have other cases to process today." Another open door- an examination room of some sort. The room was dominated by the metal table, scrubbed to a dull sheen like the hallways she had been led down, the rooms she had followed the nurse through. Beside it was a small table with a lip around the edge, and on it lay a dull green cloth with some plastic packaged items on it, and four small bottles filled with a clear liquid and capped with silver. "You will return here every 365 standard days for updates on your vaccines and shots. What we give you here," the nurse was filling a syringe with the contents of one small bottle, "are vaccines against the standard arrays of communicable diseases, plus a progestin shot. The vaccine shots are good for 730 standard days, but the progestin is every 365." She sunk the needle into Kiran's arm without preamble, depressing the plunger steadily. The girl winced when she pulled it out, and watched with wide eyes as a new one was filled with the next bottle. "This one will hurt. _Neisseria Tachomatis._" It was a wider needle, and longer. "This vaccine doesn't easily fit through the fine needles. Particles too big." The injection elicited a whimper and a jerk from the girl, but the nurse's large hand held Kiran's arm in place despite her struggles. The next vaccine, a watery, amber colored liquid, was negligible after the pain of the last shot. "This one will have to go into the other shoulder, Ivanova. This is the progestin shot. Then you'll be taken to receive your clothing, and then turned into the prison itself. Welcome to System Lambda Asteroid Maximum Penitentiary."_


	22. Chapter TwentyTwo

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Riddick paused before a bored-looking guard, staring the man in the eye. He glowered darkly, but the guard just shifted his weight to the other foot, leaning back against the wall.

Spook laid her thin hand on Riddick's thick forearm, lightly pulling him on.

"Spook, what happened that night?" The thin form stopped, turning to him.

"They lured you with me. You fought them, then one of the guards slipped. He slipped. Gave me an opening to get away. Then he got a little careless and lost a grenade or two. Blew the room apart as I managed to drag you out." The large man stared down his nose at her, silvered eyes glinting, glowing, glaring. The small girl merely gazed up into his cool face, her own slanted eyes looking even larger with the bottomless shine reflecting off them beneath her raised brows. The pouty lips hinted at the ghost of a smile that so often touched them.

The large man frowned, scowled, sighed, then let the slight touch steer him into the dark hall.

His boots echoed down the cement tunnels, the soft beat of the soles drowning out the silent tread of the pale bare feet before him. He watched the gentle form as she slipped ahead, waited for him to catch up, slunk again into eternal night.

The sweltering, smothering darkness was closer than usual, the creeping gloom stifling the senses, the mind. Spook seemed to flicker while they walked, wavering like a mirage before his eyes, dancing and weaving like a sylph in a breeze. She seemed far distant, yet as if she stood at his shoulder, her breath on his cheek.

Inmates slunk past him, their shoulders to the walls, eyeing him dully, without caring. Women turned to glance at him with wide, startled doe eyes, watching with mild amounts of panic as he passed through a brief patch of light of another guard post, the guard checking his chrono to see how much longer he had to stand at the med bay doors.

Another turn, back into the darkness. The ground crept below his boots, turn after twist, the scent of stale sweat, the faint reek of old blood.

Spook peered around her in the darkness. Ahead was the mess, cluttered with its guards, the press of the teeming masses, the clamoring of the people the rest of the universe wanted to forget. Around her she felt the sighing breaths of slam. Behind echoed the dull boots of Riddick. The darkness seemed lighter about her since the night of the explosion, and more so since Riddick showed his improved health.

His vitality, his restlessness, brought a smile to her pale lips. It was he who insisted upon leaving the hole now, and he who wanted to venture further and further away. She insisted on being the advance, scouting ahead as she was now, watching the eternal night for any who would harm her protector. She ran her fingertips over the harsh cement, smiling, content knowing that none would harm him while she watched his back and he stood ready to fight.

His health had been improving steadily.

He no longer woke her with his sleeping ramblings, his groans of pain.

No longer could she scent the underlying taint of pain and sickness in his sweat, the smell of infection on his skin.

His breathing came unhindered, his sides no longer flaring pain at the lightest touch. In fact, she had found him to be slightly ticklish, a fact that she found great delight in.

His eyes shone alert when he was wakeful, and moved slowly when he slept, when he dreamed.

He was reading again, and had managed to produce another worn book from a mysterious somewhere, even under her watchful eyes. It told the tale of a man who created a monster, and it read as a diary. He had grinned when he handed it to her, finding it to be some source of humor.

His spirits were improved, but so was his caution.

He had been nervous about her leaving the rabbit hole before, and now he insisted that they only leave it together.

But the large man was still anxious. She glanced back at him, watching the steady, alert movements of his body, the way he paced after her like a solitary lion tracking, stalking, striding through the night. His eyes were dark pits beneath his brows. His breath occasionally sucked deeply in, sniffing, testing, tasting the air around him. His shaven head would turn, tilt, as he listened to the still darkness. The dark, chrome eyes peered suspiciously about them. Every living being in the halls brought him pause, his eyes skimming their bodies, his shoulders tightening ever so slightly until their footsteps faded into the night.

Again the smile played over her lips. Her eyes turned back to the winding way before her. The light was spilling into the corridor, staining the cement the pale, sickly taint of halogen lamps. She stood, the light lapping just before her toes, her own silver eyes staring down at it. Riddick stopped next to her, and those eyes turned their quizzical, eerie gaze onto his face, her face tilted to the side, hair falling over her cheek.

There was a strange light in those mercurial eyes, a light that the tall man couldn't place. A light that struck a strange harmony. She gazed up into Riddick's eyes, and those pale fingers lightly touched his bronze arm, the touch feather-soft before departing, leaving a cool spot on his bicep.

Her thin hand gestured to the room, the thrum of voices, the thin scent of the gruel. "We've arrived. But this isn't where you want to go, despite what you said."


	23. Chapter TwentyThree

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

"What did you say?"

"I know the mess isn't where you wanted to go." She looked up at the huge man as his coarse hands gripped her shoulders, spinning her, holding her inescapably tight as he glowered down, his breath hot on her face with his anger. He was upset. She had upset him. She had said the wrong thing, known too much again. "You didn't want to come here. I can tell."_  
_

_ Shadows loomed all around Kiran. The heavy metal door closed with a dull, heavy, inescapable click behind her, enclosing her in near darkness, the concrete hall only lit by glowing running lights near the guard station doors, where the guards peered out at her through their night enhanced glass windows on either side of the heavy blast door.__  
_

_ She stood, shivering, her arms wrapped tightly about the small bag holding her three books.__  
_

_ A tinny, microphone-distorted voice told her to move along, then went silent, leaving her alone with the cold stares and the thrumming of her heartbeat. All around her she could hear the echoes of human suffering - cries of pain, the weeping of women, the sounds of men shouting, challenging one another. She stumbled off into the darkness.__  
_

_ The air around her closed in, overpowering with its stench of blood and filth, like she could imagine the smell of the grave being when she became lost in the stories. It made her stomach try to wretch up the last few meals she hadn't eaten. The breeze her skin and hair claimed was there didn't do anything to move the reek of the innards of this foul pit, or else she was so far from the recycling unit that it did no good.__  
_

_ She stumbled on in the inky dark, the floor tripping her up, the walls reaching out for her. Her heart, her feet, her breath all echoed in her ears, down the halls, all around her.__  
_

_ But as she tripped, stumbled, staggered through the darkness, the air began to taste cleaner, smell more pure. Her eyes started to adjust to the rare phosphorescence of the runner lights that peppered this corridor, but didn't spread into the side passages.__  
_

_ And then there he was.__  
_

_ He reeked of death. He emanated danger, sweat. There was a metallic tang to the heavy scent, like wet steel.__  
_

_ The faint runner lights that occasionally studded the halls backlit the massive form, flaring where it caught in the hair that hung in clumped ringlets over his shoulders, haloing the expansive shoulders in red-tinged light.__  
_

_ One thick arm shot out, deft and surprisingly quick, with a speed that belied the substantial form. The heavy hand drew her, struggling, fighting, towards the form. Closer and closer.__  
_

_ And then the other stocky arm encircled her. She yanked her body back, the hands slipping to her shoulders where they gripped her tightly. Something between a purr and a growl escaped his mammoth form.__  
_

_ "Well, well. Looks like I caught me a live one."_

The thin shoulders squirmed in the callous grip, pain sparking from where the harsh fingers bruised the pale flesh. Her silvered eyes darkened, a storm over a mercury sea. Her nostrils flared with pain and anger. The soft lips tightened into a harsh line, pursed, tight, severe.

A sudden, violent yank jerked her soft shoulders, now knotted with her own wrath, out of his grasp. She stood, a step away, her face fiercely staring into his, her hair falling in an arc just to the side of her luminous eyes. Those eyes bored into his, the fire smoldering behind the stormy surface hot enough to make him step back. Her upper lip twitched with the desire, the need to snarl at him. Such fury seethed in her small frame, locked within her, causing the gentle, soft lines of her body to go sharp, rigid, malicious. The tightly fisted hands twitched, the fingers longing to snatch for a shiv.

The air itself crackled around her, the smell of ozone harsh to his nose. Riddick turned his head slightly away from her, watching the girl from the corner of his eye, feeling his own hackles rising._  
_

_ One predator knows another,_ he thought to himself, his own senses suddenly coming aware of danger wrapped in the small body of the young woman, a shiv in a strange hand, a cornered beast baring fangs. Her scent was different, under the smell of burnt air.

It was stronger, feral.

And then the rage faded, melted away from her, left the diminutive form of the girl he knew, wide eyed, shying back away from him, the hands suddenly up, her arms crossed, hugging her small form. She stood frozen in his gaze.

"Rabbit..." Riddick warily took the step to her taking her wrists in his hands to pull her closer. "You all right?"

Spook leaned in against the huge man, shaking, shivering. Warily slow, he released her wrists to take her into his arms.

"You're right, you know. This isn't where I want to be. This isn't where you want to be either. It isn't where you deserve to be."


	24. Chapter TwentyFour

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. Eventually. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the othercharacters not seen in Pitch Black.

The guards peered out from beside the metal doors, watching the pair with suspicion.

No, that wasn't right. They were watching HIM with suspicion. They expected her. The doors before the pair, between the guards, led towards the outer fringe of Slam. Behind those heavy doors lay corridors of metal, gleaming lights. Pain was there, but not the same as the pain that lurked in the dark with the pair.

And past those brightly lit rooms, past the cold tables, beyond the scent of antiseptic and scrubbed metal, beyond the scent of ozone and sedatives, beyond the racks of syringes and blades, there was where her memories led her, where the guidance of the huge man behind her guided her.

"You took me through the pages, Good happiness is shared, Lost in the web of changes, This could be the last dance, Waltzing in the rain, 'Till the Minstrel comes to save us."

She looked at the doors for a moment longer, the soft song hanging in the chill dark. She could feel the quizzical look on her back, the silvered eyes burning on the back of her skull. Slow, steady, she drew her breath.

The air hissed softly, pulling about her. Riddick had stepped back, leaning his broad back against the wall, one booted foot against it, his shoulders rolled against the harsh cement. He stared down at his coarse, heavy hands when she stepped forward, murmuring something to the guards.

"Inmate 892372. Progestin due." The guard merely looked at her through the glass, then tapped a few buttons. He stared beside her, at the glass, his eyes flitting between whatever was being displayed there and her face, identifying her.

"Proceed." came the crackled response.

Spook jumped.

There was a heavy click, and the door unlocked.

Memory spoke to the weight of the door; that it had been ponderous, reticent to open at her touch. One year. Only one year ago for the last time that cold portal had been touched by her hand. And how many years before that had the cumbersome portico barred her path, resisting her entrance with the slow, grating yield that drained away her courage?

But now the cool door swung easily before her. She slipped through its maw, shielding her eyes from the brightness, the scouring lights. She glanced down at the lock.

The bolts were thick. The setting in the jamb looked deep, and all was dully glinting metal. Her fingers brushed over the cold, seven inch deep jamb, silver eyes brushing over the wall where wall and door blended seamlessly. The cold seeped into her pale skin.

That wasn't going to be any help.

She allowed the slight scowl to pull at her lip for a sheer moment before she felt the door blow the cool breeze on her back as it began to close. She kept her face down turned, brows lowered to protect her oh so sensitive eyes from the scalding nuance of the shifting, swirling light and color that danced, twisted, cavorted around the small chamber around her.

A few sullen faced women slouched on hard metal benches. They stared at the slender, lean muscled form where she belatedly realized her hands were still touching the wall by the door. She met the dark points that betrayed one woman's eyes to the shined vision, felt her face fall into the frozen mask, watched the other woman shrink back ever so slightly and turn her face away. Only then did Spook carefully pad across the metal floor, to take her own seat on the opposite austere bench from the women.

The route she wanted to see was to the left, blocked by another set of solid doors, their wired finish dully gleaming, sending the vicious light gyrating through her skull, making her eyes sting and smart. She could see no way to open these doors, but a small pad on the side, a speaker system.

She fidgeted a little on the cold hard bench. The smallest of the waiting women, a small woman with haunted eyes and a decided limp, scars running over her visible face, cross-crissing over her forearms, stood to follow the nurse to the curtained off area.

The chill of the wall could be felt through Spooks hair. From that position she closed her eyes, let her attention focus on the wall, and stretching through it. That speaker meant that there would be a remote location to open it, probably on the other side. It would be manned by one to three people. Three, she decided. It had to be three. That just felt right.

Her fingers slipped up to lightly touch the collar at her throat. It would be so nice to be rid of it, to look just like everyone else. To be able to simply blend in, to fade away.

To be just like everyone else._  
_

_ At least on the outside._

That train of thought brought a small smile to her pale lips, a smile that was short-lived. She jerked the leash of her mind, calling it back to heel, focusing again on what would be beyond that door.

Memory spoke of a corridor. Long. Lots of doors. Chances of guards behind each one who, should the alarm sound, would pour into that hallway like a tide of hounds on the course of a small woodland creature.

But that hallway was mostly non-military personnel. It was where the nurses and doctors were, where the guards received their medical procedures.

The other side, to her right, that would be heavily guarded.

That was where the inmates healed. That was where the murderers, mad dogs, and psychopaths were treated. So the guards to the left would be a token force at best. No more than twenty-five strong. There was never supposed to be more than one prisoner there at a time, so probably less. Fifteen was more likely. After all, to even get this far in, to this small waiting room, one needed to pass armed guards and get through a locked door. Only guards could come and go freely through the doors without contest.

The next woman stood as the first slunk out, rubbing her shoulder as she left.

That hallway. It was about one hundred yards, perhaps as much as one fifty. The doors were spread at three yard intervals. Then came another steel door. That one would have locks. Thick, heavy tumblers, sunk deep into the massive outer walls.

And beyond that was the destination, the horizon.

"Inmate 892372?" The voice was soft, but it brought her back to herself. A nurse was standing near her, looking down at her. "You fell asleep. We're ready for you now."

Spook murmured an apology as she stood to follow.


	25. Chapter TwentyFive

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. Eventually. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the othercharacters not seen in Pitch Black.

_ It always starts smelling more like blood before a riot_, she mused, sniffing the air experimentally. Her eyes near glowed as she peered around her. The cement kissed her skin a little roughly as Riddick pushed her to the side, his muscles tense and straining. She placed her hand lightly on his arm, feeling the bunching, rippling, knotting, despite his stillness. His breath came slow, silent in the dark. His skin was hot against her flesh, but she moved closer to the searing arm, and he turned his eyes to her with a quick flick and the barest turn of his face.

Riddick could smell the coming violence too. To him it was the turning of the tide, the changing wind, the turning face of the moon. It was natural, and he felt it deep in his bones, nature calling to one of her forces. There was such calmness in his face, and the glowing eyes seemed for a bare moment to be touched with human warmth. He reached out briefly, the tips of his fingers barely tracing the line of her jaw.

"Storm's coming, Spook, little rabbit." He turned the deep, silvered eyes, hooded beneath the dark slashes of his brows, back to the darkness. His shoulders were stiff, knotted, rippling with the thoughts seething within his head, thoughts of fighting, of death, of blood, of pain. His nostrils flared, taking in huge drafts of the dank, musky air. She wrapped her fingers around his, A small sound escaping her, calling his attention back. "Hush now, Spook. We just need to get back to the hole. Then you tell me what you saw."

"Riddick-" Again he hushed her, brushing the harsh fingers over her lips, turning his head only long enough to frown at her. Her concerns turned into little more than a sigh over his hand, a snort of air and a crease in the brow. He turned his attention away again, tuning her out almost completely.

He was concerned. He was worried, worried that she wouldn't hold up beneath what he wanted. Spook studied the cheekbones, the nose, the way his lips were pursed. _He hopes I'll lead him out of here. He doesn't know how, but he hopes, and he berates himself for hoping. I'm not just a girl, Riddick!_ The vehemence of the though caught her by surprise. She knew she could do it. He was Riddick. She had to live up to his expectations. Didn't she?_  
_

_ I CAN do this! He expects it, and I will do it. He asks, and I will succeed._ She nodded to herself. _But he hasn't actually asked yet._ Ah, that nagging little voice.

He took a slow step. She followed._  
_

_ He will, though. It is his right, the right of the strong, the right of those who think they are strong. It matters little if they are what they believe. They make the demands al the same.__  
_

_ But this one. This one is different. This one is strong, in body, in mind, in will. He is stronger than I. He will be the one. And he will have me at his side. That is plain._

Then he turned a slight bit, catching her eye with the tail of his. He made a vague gesture with his hand, the movement lost in the dark. And he moved on._  
_

_ All around us are beasts, nothing more than that. Animals in human guise. You grasp their minds, and only the beast stares back through their eyes._

She tread carefully in his footsteps, his boots the only sound, echoing faintly around them.

All this damn dark. Surrounding her, smothering her. It was forever; that's what everyone said, thought, felt. This place was Hell. Dante, priests, they all had it wrong. Hell wasn't hot or cold. Hell was Darkness. They were right that it was filled with the dregs of humanity, but they had the atmosphere all wrong. There was no brimstone and fire. There was no freezing spiral. Instead there was darkness. Darkness and cement. Darkness, cement, and the reek of blood. All around, the pale shade of death, the specter scent of blood.

Lost in thought, she bumped into Riddick's broad back.

He was frozen in the hall, his muscles tense. There was that inaudible growl, the one that thrummed through his flesh, rattling wherever she touched him. His shoulders were squared, hard matted with aggression, though his arms were loose, the hands open. A muscle along the side of his thigh was twitching slightly. The musculature alongside the base of his spine stood in sharp relief.

And before him, fixed in the balor of his serpent gaze was another man.

This one was near to Riddick's height, and easily his equal in mass. He had skin of such a hue as to melt his form into the shadows, the glint of his Shine visible in the smothering blanket of the dark outlined by the barest shade of his body.

In one hand he bore a blade, vicious and long, with a foreign blade, forked like a serpent's tongue. It shone dully in the darkness, the edges glinting in patches; rough sharpening against the cement floor had scored and scarred the vicious edge.

In his other hand was a shaft of stained white, long and slightly bent, with a nasty shard of metal fastened through one of the wider end sections. It was an axe, fashioned from a broad piece of shrapnel metal and the thighbone of a fallen convict. Spook stared at it, eyes drawn to the gruesome artifact.

A flash of white.

The man was smiling.

"Ah. That be a lovely piece of flesh you have behind you." He spoke with deep, rich tones. Tones that rumbled through the pit of Spook's stomach. "I think I be taking her from you." The axe head let out a grating squeal as it ran its edge over the forked blade. "Just walk away, big man. I promise I treat her nice."

The growl in Riddick's chest grew louder. His calloused hand inched towards his back, reaching for the shiv.

Spook placed her hand on his arm.

And she stepped forward.

And she stared the stranger in the eyes.

"Spook, no."

She only glanced at Riddick, then held out her hands to the side.

"You want me? Come get me." The stranger's eyes flicked from her open stance to the fuming man behind her. The girl only smiled. "You only have to reach me, touch me. If you can manage that alone, then I'll go without complaint."

"Beat him, touch you? I beat him, you're mine. None of your games."

"Without beating him. Walk those five paces to touch me. He won't interfere." She glanced over her shoulder to flash a smile to Riddick.

Still the stranger hesitated.

"What the fuck are thinking, rabbit? I can ghost this one easy."

"Trust me? Please. He won't make it this far. Trust your little Spook. Doesn't she always manage to make things work out when the odds are against her?" And she turned her face away from him again. "I need to know I can do this."

"Do what?"

But the large man seemed to have made up his mind. With another hiss of the axe against the forked tongue of metal he steeled his resolve. He set the blade aside, keeping the longer reaching axe in his hand, resting it against his shoulder. He flashed a startlingly white smile.

He took a step towards her.

Then another.

And he fell, writhing, to the cement floor, screeching in agony. His fingertips clawed at his face. His back arched in violent, wracking spasms, bending himself backwards nearly double. His screaming grew louder. His nails were clawing strips of skin away from his flesh now. All his back was rippling as muscles fought themselves. The thick legs thrashed against the walls. His head was beating against the cold floor. There was blood gleaming wetly in the matted hair. Blood flowed down his face like tears. Blood coated his fingers. The wracking of his back grew more violent, faster, tighter pulls. The screaming grew louder, more frenzied.

Until with a wet, sick crack he fell suddenly silent. Blood pooled around him. He lay, crumpled like a discarded doll, his back in a strange line.

Spook merely blinked.


	26. Chapter TwentySix

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. Eventually. At least that's the current plan. But I might decide I want to keep him. So there. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

"What the fuck was that, Spook?"

She just blinked._  
_

_ The order, the same order, the insistence. Her feeble headshake. The searing lick of pain. The blow from the shockstick.__  
_

_ The girl arched again, convulsing, crying. The spots were growing, merging. The edges of the world were already indistinct. Again, his order.__  
_

_ "Do it!"__  
_

_ She shook, fearing the next blow.__  
_

_ And then she heard it, as plainly as if he had shouted it, as private as if he had whispered it into her ear.__****_

_** Just a little more.**__****_

_** Just a little more and she'll break just like all the rest. She'll warp any mind however we tell her to.**__****_

_** Just a little more. Just a few more pushes.**__  
_

_ A hand closed around his wrist, halting the decent of the shockstick. Her breath licked his face, her eyes boring into his. Her face was cold, contorted into an alien mask of ice and wrath, no longer the crying face of the girl he had struck.__  
_

_ "No!" The voice echoed through the room, a strong cry, but the reverberating tone wasn't what made him cringe.__  
_

_ The same word, a thousand times louder, echoed, tunneled, burned through his mind, searing his thoughts, bringing tears of pain to his eyes.__  
_

_ The level gaze bored into his eyes, watching without a hint of compassion as the fear crept into the eyes of the officer.__  
_

_ And in his mind, she found details.__  
_

_ Seven girls so far, all under the biological age of thirteen, raped, tortured, murdered. Flayed, really. This man had seen the pictures taken by the investigators, the images of where the girls were found, of the bodies themselves. He had read the file. There wasn't anything to connect the murders except the age group and the rape; no two were ever mutilated in the same way, no two had a similar appearance. The places they were found were strange. A mall, an abandoned barn, a museum, a library, a condemned apartment building. There was only the DNA of the girls, no trace of the killer.__  
_

_ And further in his mind, his own memories of his early girlfriends and what they did. The unrelated memories of his own daughters crying in the night with nightmares.__  
_

_ She took them all, pieces from each. She looked at the memories, looked at his mind, and began to paint new memories.__  
_

_ "I'm sorry." Tears streamed down her face. "You give me no choice. I see in your mind that you will kill me if you don't break me." Horror filled the face of the officer as memories emerged in his mind. "Please forgive me."__  
_

_ ** He had been drinking, that he knew. He thought he had just passed out, out on the couch, deep into the unconsciousness that took him away from the wife who didn't approve of his work, from children who now were at an age where they scorned the father they had once so loved.**_**_  
_**

**_ But now, staring deep into the dark eyes of the Psi, he began to remember what had happened._****_  
_**

**_ He had left the house, stumbling and staggering. He had shuffled along the streets, through the glowing haze of streetlamps and alcohol, until he had spotted her. A girl, the same age as his own daughters, laughing and flirting with some boys, scorning her parents concerns that she should be home by a certain time._****_  
_**

**_ Curfews were for babies, and it was just her stupid father trying to control her._****_  
_**

**_ He moved up behind her and cleared his throat._****_  
_**

**_ "Isn't it about time you were all going home? You're a bit young to be out now." He leveled his gaze at them all, one by one, until the boys muttered and mumbled and fled. The girl started to follow, but the officer grabbed her arm._****_  
_**_  
"no..." The word slithered from his mouth as he fought the onslaught of memories, the tide that threatened to engulf him._**_  
_**

**_ Another girl, walking to school, her hair carefully braided, her pad under her arm._****_  
_**

**_ He shook his head, trying to clear it._****_  
_**

**_ Another, dark haired, blue eyed, waiting outside the mall for her mother. He had flashed his badge, and she'd gotten into his car without question._****_  
_**

**_ Their begging, pleading, crying, sobbing, their pain and their blood flooded his mind. The panic each time when he had seen them dead. The guilt. The anguish. The momentary relief when he'd found some good place to dump their bodies._****_  
_**

**_ He had used the old knife his great grandfather had collected in the War, the one he'd taken off a rebel leader, the one that had been given to him by his dying grandfather._**_****_

_** It had easily sliced through flesh, nicking bone. It had almost gently removed the strips of just skin, reflecting the world with a soft red glow.**__  
_

_ His eyes widened in horror. He could almost feel the blade in his hand now, the sodden heat of blood coating his skin.__  
_

_ He reeled back from the Psi standing so calmly before him, tears on her face, tears over his guilt, tears over what he had done.__  
_

_ The shockstick clattered to the ground.__  
_

_ He stumbled back away from the diminutive girl, his hand dropping to the butt of the gage at his side. He thumbed the safety as he brought it up._

She still hadn't moved. Riddick stood there, his liquid-silver eyes flitting between the cooling body and the statue of flesh that was the girl.

"Rabbit?" A booted foot shifted; he almost stepped closer to her. A calloused hand started to rise to touch her, clenched, then dropped.

Spook blinked.

She shook herself.

Her eyes fixed on the dead man on the floor.

And her shoulders shook, her back rolled as a wave of nausea flowed over her and she crashed heavily into the harsh wall.

Her forehead leaned against the cruel kiss of the cement. Her back convulsed a few more times.

When she looked up, her eyes were bleary, unfocussed, and there was something deep in them, a hurt that hadn't faded. Leaning heavily against the wall, surrounded by the acidic smell of bile and the fetid reek of fresh death, she stared into his eyes.

There was something new about her. There was a confidence in the way she held herself, even now when she used the wall to support herself.

It was the look of a dog who finally won the fight.

It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, made his muscles tense.

"You're scared of me, Riddick." Her voice was so quiet. The softly metallic eyes stared sadly into his face.

In her hand hung the collar.


	27. Chapter TwentySeven

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. Even though I'm not sure I want to. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Apparently shock was one of the few emotions that could be written across Riddick's cold face.

For that was what deposed the mask of cool, aloof predator that he liked to keep, leaving an expression would lead one to expect he had just been hit in the head by a rather large piece of wood.

And she had settled onto crossed ankles, staring up at him, the collar at his feet. He stared at her. She watched him, the eyes gentle, glowing with concern, and something else, something warm and soft.

Occasionally her head would twitch, a dog hearing a far off sound beyond its owner's range. Her eyes would go slightly out of focus then, and she would shake herself, snapping herself, her attention, back to the man before her.

For his part, he just watched her with perturbed intensity, looking at the collar at his feet, and back to her. It was all too strange, the suddenness of it all. There, in a crescent before his boots, lay that piece of consternation, the one thorn in the side of his wants.

He stooped, taking the piece of metal into his hands, turning it over and over, looking at the quarter-inch wide metal, the small square of the lock mechanism. It had a strangeness about it. The metal was stiff, but at the same time it had a small amount of give to it. It was still a little warm. This thin piece of circuitry and metal, this little piece of technology, had kept Spook so easily at heel. He looked again at the pale face, glowing in strawberry and cream through the shine, taking in the savage pride, the wildness that had settled into the set of her pouting lips, the creases near her eyes._  
_

_ That enough should be proof._ He let the thought slide through his mind. _The confidance, the brashness, the ballsy behavior she's been displaying. That alone should be enough to prove it's real, that she's not that little rabbit anymore._

But it wasn't. It still didn't seem real. He held the collar in his hands, idly turning it over and over. He could look down at her, where she sat carefully on the harsh ground, with just a hint of nerves starting to betray her in her shoulders.

Maybe it was the suddenness that he couldn't handle; he hadn't had to work for it, so it couldn't be real. It couldn't actually have just fallen into his lap, could it? And yet he had seen the proof. Hadn't she been doing it for days, weeks now? Just little things until today.

He glanced back, shooting the barest look to the crumpled cadaver behind him.

There was simply no explaining that.

There was no way of rationalizing how that huge man had dropped, had writhed in agony, screaming, while his body broke itself. The eyes were still wide, staring through the milky film that had covered them since that horrible death.

It sent a chill along Riddick's spine.

It was one thing to kill a man, to feel his blood pour out over your hands, to plunge the shiv into his back or pull the walking ghost onto the blade. The end result was the same, and there was an intimacy about it. Closeness filled that kind of kill, their blood marking you, touching you, changing you ever so slightly, even as your shiv sent their world into a spiral from which it would never return.

But that...

She hadn't laid a finger at him; hadn't even raised her hands. Just leveled those eyes touched with curiosity behind that cold shine.

And he was just as dead as she'd sliced his throat.

And that poor bastard hadn't stood a chance.

She could kill without touching; stand back and ghost a full grown man without breaking a sweat.

All for want of a little strip of metal and circuitry.

His eyes sought her throat, still not quite believing.

But there, beneath her earnest face, was the long, clean line of her throat, bare. There wasn't a mark he could spot there. Just the soft flesh.

"Spook, what happened."_  
_

_ Riddick had fallen, the tide of blows too much even for him. The guard behind her held her battered flesh in a grip of iron, his skin as cold, except where the heat of blood showed that her nails had marked him. Her struggles were negligible to the man, merely urging him to murmur into her ear to urge her to fight him more.__  
_

_ All she could see was her protector, the huge form of him struck over and over by a pair of shocksticks, her own body protesting as she watched, feeling the ghost pains of those strikes._

"It was when Khyron tried to kill you..."_  
_

_ She struggled harder, her eyes wide and wet, her fear for the life of the massive killer giving her new wind. The guard's fingers gripped her tighter, digging gouts in her pale flesh. She cried out, but not for the pains of her own flesh. Her protector had gone down, a press of inmates bearing him to the floor. He was still bellowing, still fighting._

"When you went for him, when they all hit you at once..."_  
_

_ She heaved against the binding arms of Talbot, squirming, twisting, struggling like a demented serpent. He lifted her then, squeezing her tighter, crushing her breath from her small body.__  
_

_ He lifted her. She resisted, resolutely throwing her muscles against his. And then he was arched slightly back, and she knew what to do.__  
_

_ She kicked. Like a recalcitrant mule she struck, and let loose a small cry of triumph when her heel connected and she felt the odd pop beneath her foot. She had come down on the top of his knee, and with enough force to damage it. She didn't know if it was his kneecap going out of its narrow groove or if she had managed to break the same, but it didn't matter.__  
_

_ Down he went.__  
_

_ And he dropped her as he collapsed._

"Talbot was still holding me, fighting with me. I wanted to get to you, to help you somehow. I didn't know anything else to do..."_  
_

_ She started forward. She cried out to the man buried beneath the tide of armed men. The cement bit into her bare feet as she scrambled over it.__  
_

_ Getting to that man, to her fallen protector, was all that mattered. Her vision narrowed, only showing her that pile, the writhing tangle of bodies.__  
_

_ But Talbot had more stamina than he thought. With the near-comical jerk of a dog hitting the end of a chain, she snapped to a halt, yanking backward. Her breath stopped coming. She felt his clenched fist against the nape of her neck.__  
_

_ He was pulling her back towards him, snarling at her, cursing her._

"He grabbed the collar, using it to pull me back to him. It was when he did that that I knew... He must've thumbed it. All of a sudden it was like being caught in the echo of a shouting crowd, hearing everything and its reverberation. I don't know how, but all of a sudden I had two grenades... I knew that the collar was off then. And I knew how to get you out." She turned those sad eyes up to his face again, tilting her head to one side. "All this time without it... It's like when I got the shine, and suddenly being able to see again. Like the world suddenly is back in focus." She closed her eyes, sagging a little. "He must have thumbed the lock when he grabbed the collar, when he yanked me back. That's when it happened." Again she turned her large doe eyes to him. Her hands rested limp in her lap.

The boots creaked ever so faintly as the massive man knelt before her, bringing his face close to hers. She felt the soft caress of his breath as he stared intently into her eyes. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his hands, shifted his back.

She sat quietly before him, her lips pulling into a faint smile.

She didn't flinch when his hand suddenly gripped her chin, tilting her face up, the other touching the smooth arc of her throat. There was a slight patch of roughness, where the shoulder met the lines of her neck. A chaffed point. Rough fingertips brushed it lightly.

"How long have you worn that goddamn thing, rabbit?" The gravel of the voice washed over her, bringing the hint of a smile to her lip.

"Not entirely sure... Was 16 biological when I came here, about the same chronological... I think it's been about five years... Maybe only four, maybe six."

"And you can hear us all? All our thoughts and shit?" He pulled back ever so slightly. It wasn't a comfortable thing, the concept of a little girl being able to root around in his head, that she could learn whatever she wanted about him straight from his own brain. There was shit inside there he couldn't admit to himself... he'd be damned if he wanted her to know it.

She studied his face for a long moment, hair curling before her eyes.

"Not all of it. Block most of it... Been working on that since it happened, you know? It's too much, otherwise. Sensory Overload. Now I only hear some of it... The shouted thoughts. I don't want to hear them all." Fingertips lightly brushed his wrist, a warm touch against the chill that had been creeping over him. "I don't like to look into peoples' heads. I haven't looked into yours, if that's what you're worried about."

Silence. Long, deep, and filled with decisions, it prowled between them.

Eyes bored deep into eyes, his dark and brooding, hers soft, expectant. There was honesty in hers, unguarded, open.

And willingness. She would tell him anything.

And he nodded, curt, accepting. "All right, rabbit." The hand touched her cheek. "We shouldn't sit here, anyway. You can explain this all on the way back to the hole."


	28. Chapter TwentyEight

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Near total darkness, something akin to absolute silence, flowed through Slam. The rare runnerlights flickered, sputtered fitfully. A subdued, sullen gang glowered at each other across the tables in the mess. Guards shifted at their posts, expressions of extreme boredom pulling at their grim faces behind their clear face shields.

Riddick cast a half full bowl onto the table before Spook, glancing around him, brows furrowed against the strong broad nose, casting his gunmetal eyes into pools of shadows. A casual flick of his wrist dropped his own bowl onto the table, and he settled onto the table and bench like a lion, his thick forearms on either side of the metal dish, broad shoulders hunched. Cold breath flared his nostrils, a stallion scenting a rival. Brooding eyes continued their wandering, occasionally settling for brief moments on the near-serene face across from him, a face that held traces of wild anticipation in the haunted lines.

For her part, she watched him. That omnipresent ghost of a smile hovered around her soft mouth, and the soft quicksilver eyes watched his closed, clouded face. An arm reached out. Her warm gentle fingers seared his skin at the soft caress on his own fingers. With effort, he turned his silvered eyes to hers. Her full lips formed words that voice did not.

_Do you trust me?_

He blinked. His tongue darted to moisten his lips. The heavy brows flickered, the slightest barely noticeable twitch towards his stubble pelted scalp, then again took their roost, hanging ominously over his eyes.

"Why?"

He put no volume into the rumble, letting her feel the words, like a tide of thunder, an avalance in a gravel pit.

"Talking would be easier here," her fingertips rose, brushed softly across his stubble-strewn temple, fell back to his hand where his fingers lightly took hers. "I can watch it like ripples on the surface of a pond, never delving deeper." A tilt of her head and she met his eyes again. A strange light shone behind her shine, a light that nagged at Riddick, gnawed at the back of his head, begging to be realized.

Trust me.

That was what those open, frank, glowing eyes said. That was what the wordless plea was for.

It was a similar feeling to a foot in an open wound. Painful, yet at the same time numbing. Chilling to the core.

And he didn't know how to respond.

After all, wasn't she just a tool, a means to an end? That was why he had been grooming her, encouraging, enhancing, cultivating her trust in him. He scowled, retreating from that earnest gaze._  
_

_ I trust her to stay out of my mind. I trust her to not ghost me. But this... This is new._ There was an odd feeling, a strangeness, in his chest. _If I don't make a show of trust to her, I could be dead or worse; She could rat me, or ex me out like she did that bastard in the hall, or just vanish into slam leaving me right back where I was before I stumbled onto her in the first place.__  
_

_ I've always thought that something else had a hand in that... The way our paths kept crossing. That for some reason, that little rabbit got my attention, my curiosity.__  
_

_ But the question here is trust.__  
_

_ How far do I trust her? I can't control her through fear. It's probably good she doesn't really fear me anymore. I'd be just like that poor ghost, laying out in the bowels of slam until a guard hauled my dead ass off to Disposal. She does what I want of her without fear. All I've ever had to do was ask. She's always respected what I've asked of her in regards to my own space. Would this be any different?_

"Spook, come sit next to me."

His glinting eyes closed, feeling her settle next to him on the bench, the way the heat radiated off her at the closeness of her body.

Eyes gleaming with surgical shine resumed their cursory scanning of the room, glowering down the few faces that had turned to watch the pair with muted curiosity.

That look, so full of darkness, sent their attention quickly to other things, their curiosity quelling in the face of murderous calm._  
_

_ Everything. Everything depends on a display of trust._ "Tell me how it works."

She kept her voice low, to where even he had to work to hear her, but she spoke in a steady stream, without any hesitation.

"The easiest is if I just keep, well, I guess you could compare it to a finger on the pulse. Like that, only on your mind. I've found that I'm drawn to what I have to call shouted thoughts, for lack of a better term. Those are the ones that the thinker is concentrating strongly on, focusing on the importance of them.

"You don't have them often, if at all. At lest, I've never noticed them coming from you, so it should be an easy way to do this

"Whenever you want me to hear it, you just shout it in your mind. Does that make sense? If you do that, and I have that 'finger on the pulse' going, then there's no way I can miss it, but I'll not see anything else."

Riddick was nodding slowly throughout the explanation, but now he paused. "There's something else."

"Well, yes. Talking inside the head will always color whatever is said with the emotional state of the speaker. I don't know any way around that." There was a tinge of fear around her, coloring her scent. It was a welcomed thing to the huge man; it was like an old companion, and it set him at ease. That scent was what he was used to in people. Fear was his dearest friend. Fear also was one of the best truth serums he knew.

He bent his head closer to her, letting the scent wash over him. It brought a clarity to his mind._  
_

_ I've got a great opportunity here. My own Psi to get me out of here.__  
_

_ Be damned if I'm going to let this opportunity go._

His breath licked her ear. One heavy hand settled onto the small of her back, just to the left of her spine. He felt her breathing quicken, scented the rise of her pulse. His other hand slipped beneath her chin, turning her face with an amazingly gentle pressure.

She couldn't help but widen her eyes at the closeness of his face, and the way his very essence seemed to wrap around her. He loomed, closed around her, pressed so close without ever touching except for the harsh hand at her back, the snarling, calloused caress on her jaw.

He was some sort of nightmare closing in around her, all terrifying power, liquid strength, poured into a near-human mold. Or a storm, brooding, building, deepening, crackling beneath the caramel skin, skin that glowed, radiated with power and light, shimmering before the shine.

His fingers lightly stroked her cheek, a study in contrasts; harsh fingertips against smooth jaw; his cool flesh against her warming skin. Her scent sharpened, echoing around him, through him. He met her eyes, silver boring into silver.

Her lips were slightly parted, her breathing quick, her eyes wide.

The stone-etched face of Riddick moved a little nearer, almost touching hers. With a soft sigh he closed his eyes, drawing her scent deeply, his outward breath tickling her cheek, sending the loose strands of her hair fluttering like her heartbeat. A rumble shook his frame, something akin to a purr filling the tightness around her. Shivers wracked her small frame, shuddering through her into his hands._  
_

_ Her only fear is instinctive. It's the fear of a female confronted by what is perceived as a stronger creature, a more dominant male._

And then it hit him._  
_

_ She doesn't realize that she can kill me. She still sees me as the one to turn to for protection. Not a clue why, but she still sees me as the stronger one.__  
_

_ This could work nicely._

And he nodded, letting his cheek barely graze against hers.

Rasping voice whispered, hoarse, in her ear.

"I trust you, rabbit."


	29. Chapter TwentyNine

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick pouts, and considers a good sulk I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black, or any of its characters. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Beneath the curve of his arm, Riddick could feel her soft breathing. Against his palm, her pulse fluttered slowly. Her hair brushed his shoulder in silk a caress. He bent his head, lips brushing those same soft strands.

Downy skin rested on his arm, her cheek pillowed on his bicep, her breath warming the skin in a slow tempo. The same cadence gently raised the arm he had thrown over her narrow ribs. Small noises, little soft sighs, wordless hums, danced with her slow breath.

And then the gunmetal eyes opened, staring into the dark, looking around them from a place just above the sleeping girl, where he moved into something of a crouch. Rough fingers moved to touch her cheek as he gazed down over her.

She was curled up on her side, knees pulled up towards her stomach. Sleep had softened her face, smoothing the traces of worry from around her eyes, infusing her face with a youth and serenity usually wanting in her waking face.

Gentle lips formed a soft pout, a little protesting noise escaping her when the arm beneath her cheek moved, and her fingers closed weakly about his wrist.

A chuckle rumbled in his barrel, a closed-lipped smile twisting his normally callous, maleficent mouth. The gunmetal in his gaze softened, brightened, his gaze falling carelessly over the sleeping girl.

So quiet. So still. So trusting. This poor little rabbit, little Spook. Again his fingers sought contact with her, this time lightly sending their roughened pads over the silken strands of her dark hair. When was the last time anyone was this comfortable in my presence, in this much contact with me. He closed his eyes, and softly drew her scent, savoring the sweetness of her, with its piquant undertones, the tang, where the flavor of her aroma mixed with the barbed undertones of his own.

She stirred, turning against him, now snuggling her cheek against his hard chest, her hair fanned out over his arm. More incoherent murmurs, lips moving faintly against the muscled lines. It faintly tickled, bringing another soft rumble through him._  
_

_ The corridor.__  
_

_ She thinks that we can make the left corridor work, and the right hand is known to lead to the hangar bay. She says the left is less guarded, being mostly medical personnel, but it is also where the guards are taken for treatment, so there will be some guards thee who, while not on duty and not capable of much else, can still take shots at us. The right side is heavily guarded, and most of those guards are in concealed positions, and those guards are armed against exactly what we want to do.__  
_

_ Right side we have no idea how many guards. Upwards of thirty was her guess. Left she said fifteen to twenty, half of which are there for injuries. If that does lead to the hangar bay, which makes some sense, then the left path is definitely the one we need.__  
_

_ I can take several at once, even with the gauges. Spook says she can hold the others, and I'm going to have to believe her on that. She should know what she's capable of. With that said, I'll take the first group, and then the others can be dealt with one by one, or in pairs, depending on how she weakens.__  
_

_ At least she's being honest with me about her level, about how she doesn't know how much stamina she's got for this.__  
_

_ And that honesty means we do this thing fast and hard.__  
_

_ I can live with that._

Her eyes fluttered, opened, met the gunmetal gaze. Soft lips pulled into a smile, and her lids sank to sleepily cover the soft silver of her own stare.

"hi." She blinked a few times, stretching in his arms, stifling a yawn.

The killer just let the barest hint of smile touch his mouth, and growled a soft, crooning note in response. The arms tightened around her briefly, then slipped away from her, letting the cool, sterile air flood into their warm place.

"It's time to go, little rabbit."


	30. Chapter Thirty

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

He fidgeted.

The uniform wasn't the most comfortable, and he was bored. He'd been standing still or patrolling the same corridor for the last 5 hours. Nothing ever happened on this patrol; it was all guards or sleeping medical personnel.

And he wasn't even allowed a good break.

His light hair was eased back to a tight tail, and scented with some saccharine spice that was cloyingly sweet, laced through with the acrid, bitter reek of aged nicotine smoke. There was a sullen set to the deceptively soft mouth. He gave a heavy sigh through a thin, pointed nose, closing green eyes for a moment, blocking out the dull metal around him.

"God, I want a smoke right now..."

Then he saw the girl.

He had no clue where she came from; she had simply appeared where she hadn't been a moment before standing a few yards away, watching him with her head tilted to one side, an inquisitive expression on her face and the feeling that she had always been there. She was dressed in clean white, a loose wrap of soft cloth that seemed to simply float around her, as if made of somehow spun fog. There was a faint hint of a smile, but it was tinged with a deep, resounding, heartbreaking sadness. There was a touch of sorrow around the large, slightly slanted eyes, in the arc of the strong brows. Green eyes met mirrored silver.

She had a Shine.

She was an inmate.

She held a hand towards him as he reached for his gun, palm up, her face set in the same melancholy, almost apologetic expression.

The air around her shivered, quivered, like the heat off a desert sand. Somehow, she seemed to change. For a moment, she was no longer the soft looking girl in the flowy cloth but the same girl in bloodstained prison rags, a blade dripping ichor in her slender hand, a spray of blood lining the pale mournful face and more drying in her dark hair. She bore the scent of death around her like a perfume, the visceral tang of fresh blood, and the odor of fresh death.

All around her, the walls were stained, smeared, painted a deep, dripping primal crimson, splashed and streaked with sprays and graceful arcs of the thick color. The doors were open, and pooling blood inched from some, half visible bodies fell through others, the blood reflecting their wide, horrified, fear filled, fogging eyes.

And behind her a vision of hellish terror.

A huge man, broad in shoulder and built like a raging bull. Hard forearms were gloved with the slime of viscera and other gobbets of dripping gore. In one hand was the limp, nearly decapitated cadaver of a guard, arterial blood still flowing. In the other was a curved, wide blade. His shirt was the deep near-black hue of fresh blood, and it was hard to tell exactly where the wetly sanguinous cloth ended and the crimson soaked skin began.

The face was set in a stony glare, proud and dangerous. Blood was spattered over the chiseled features, as if the hell-spawned being had been carefully striped with it in primitive, terrifying marks of an otherworldly warrior.

He too had the deep, cold, emotionless silvered eyes, but there was a different quality to his. Those deep eyes showed nothing, no expression, no reflections. They were simply there, darkly gleaming in the shadowed facets of his cruelly ecstatic face.

He simply didn't look human.

He was too cold, too obviously freed by the sprays of crimson that accompanied his every move, too viciously, mordaciously, venomously joyous. He seemed to delight in the feeling of the hot life pouring over him, but he dropped the still-dripping corpse and began to stride forward, only pausing in his approach long enough for a deep kiss of the thin, pale, ghostly woman, and to murmur something to her, his hand leaving a smear of brutish scarlet on the pale cheek.

And then the vision was simply gone.

The hall was empty, dully gleaming metal, sterile as always. Quiet filled his senses, calm air gently moving from the vents caressed his skin. He could smell his own sharpened sweat under the heavy scent of the oils in his hair. He blinked. His pounding heart thundered in his ears.

But there was no trace of the vision; no scent of copper and gore, no sign of the blood dripping over the walls, none of the silent choking of the dying breaths of mangled once-human meat on the floor. Thundering, booming footsteps of the fiend had vanished. The doors were closed, pristine, without even light leaking from beneath them.

And the girl was gone. Faded, vanished, or whatever hallucinations did, just like the rest of it.

His hand lowered from where it rested on the gauge, going back to his side. He shook his head. That was the problems with these shifts. The mind played tricks, twisted around the fears of the men who worked them, especially shifts like this where there wasn't anyone to talk to.

But damn if he didn't need that cigarette.

And then he felt the soft, teasing, tearing kiss of metal sliding into his flesh.

There was the heat of fiery breath against his cheek.

His blink brought the world into a cruel focus of ruby and silver.

Beside him, an arm around his shoulders to still him and pull him deeper onto the blade that snarled into yielding flesh, was the devilish creature. He opened his mouth to cry out, but no sound came.

The man-shaped demon nearly smiled.

And then the girl appeared again, striding slowly, silently up to him. The long, cool fingers slipped into his pocket, then raised the smoke to the paling lips, flicking the lighter to life for him.

A voice rumbled, thundered, shuddered through the muscles holding him on the icy blade.

"You're a damn sentimentalist, Spook."


	31. Chapter ThirtyOne

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Riddick laced his fingers through the guard's hair, lifting the weakening man to eye level. The cigarette hung limp from the whitening lip, the tip barely glowing with the fading breath. The green eyes were having trouble focusing, or else he just didn't care to look at the dusky, blooded face and cruel, cold eyes.

"How do we get through this door?" Riddick didn't speak; he rumbled, he thundered, with the low roar of storm-driven tides against a sheer face of dark rock. Those cold, impassive eyes watched the guard with a snide curiosity.

The only response was the shivering of the guard and the seeping heat from over the shiv where the damp scarlet life pumped, flowed, in ever slowing beats over the gore-encrusted hand wrapped lovingly around the handle of the blade sunk so deeply into the flesh. Muscles in the dying man's jaw worked; he was trying to muster, trying to get his body to respond to his wishes.

Light flared in the vicious pits of Riddick's eye, his nostrils flaring as he drew another raging breath. His fingers tried to tighten more, knuckles already a strained white amid the strands of lanky, oil-scented hair. Quicksilver eyes blazed, wrath fueling vicious balefire deep inside the leviathan body of the killer.

A strange numbness settled into the guard, along with that creeping cold. His limbs felt dead, leaden. He was vaguely aware of the weight of his legs, of the whole of his body. The ragged pain from being suspended from the monstrous grip began to fade. His tongue felt thick and tasted of copper, like his mouth had been stuffed with old rags that had been soaked in blood.

As he dangled from Riddick's hand, the jaw worked once more; he spat into the crimson-streaked face.

He was flung against the wall with a casual shake of the massive arm, and the harsh impact was punctuated by the feeling of the curved shiv slicing, ripping, out of his back, through his side, as he was tossed so unceremoniously away. A snarl ripped through the air, the scarlet painted form turning on the small girl, towering over her unflinching form.

She stood still before the tide of his wordless wrath, simply gazing up into that contorted face with those sad silver eyes, then shook her head, turning pointedly to the crumpled rag of a man that lay at the base of the wall, discarded by the careless hand of Riddick.

She seemed to flicker and glow before the clouding eyes, as if there was something inside her that he was slowly becoming aware of, something that the hell-spawned beast at her side could not see. Infinite sadness, boundless compassion, wordless understanding ebbed from her. Bare, silent feet carried her to his side, seeming to be untouched by the blood that puddle around him, as if she stood on the surface of it. He stared at those milk-white feet, into the viscera around them, and indeed, she was on top of it. And in it was reflected something he could not quite understand.

Not the frail looking girl, with the cruel smear of the monster's touch on her, but a strange glowing shape, only vaguely human. The guard blinked and looked up to the colorless face with the dark, distressed eyes.

He found the softest smile, laced through with mourning, and compassion in the unlikely eyes, soft pools of storm-kissed silver. She reached out her hands to take his, then bent to brush her lips against his cheek._  
_

_ :I am so sorry, but this is as it has to be.:_

Shock shuddered through the guard. The voice, whispering, melodious, tender, had brushed across his mind, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake.

"What are you?" He could barely form the words, letting them fall slurred from his numb lips._  
_

_ :You know what I am. And You know I can make this all end.:_ She touched the cold cheek, looking so deep into his dulling green eyes. Around her the fetid stink of cigarettes and rancid oil that perhaps once had scented of vanilla. Beneath her hand the guard rallied again, light touching the eyes, a hint of color to the bloodstained lip. He moved, a valiant attempt to shake his head._  
_

_ :Nothing is as it seems. You know that now. You can feel that in your bones.: The glow around her grew brighter. The cold in his body was slowly being replaced by a warmth that spread from the light, tingling touch of her fingers on his face. :Let me take you away. Let me end this all, take you away from the cold, the hurting. I will take you someplace where nothing will ever hurt you again. All you need to do is tell me. Tell me what I need to know.:_

And oh, that whisper was so kind, so inviting. It slipped through him, teasing, elusive, seductive. It brought tears to his eyes with the grace and beauty of it. It played through his thoughts, prancing like a newborn filly through a field, dancing like a youth leading a lover to a secret rendezvous.

The light was getting brighter. His jaw hung loose and slack, his eyes wide, staring at the pale girl. He felt that soft touch on her cheek sink deeper, gently touching deeper into his mind._  
_

_ Yes._

He closed his eyes, sighing out his last breath. His head tilted back, striking the wall softly with a dull ring. The shoulders fell limp.

And Spook straightened. Riddick was close behind her, still growling, but now with that coarse, cruel croon, and he gathered the slender form into his arms, touching his forehead to hers.

"What did you find, little rabbit. Can you get me through here?"

Teeth flashed, a bright smile so close to his face. She wriggled to free a hand from his muscled embrace, reaching to the keypad beside the door, arching back over the massive forearms gripping around her back. Fingers danced on the pad to the chorus of soft tones, with a soft click and a brushing of her lips against his as finale.

"You had doubts?"


	32. Chapter ThirtyTwo

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

"You done well, Spook, little rabbit." For a brief moment his approval, laced with a warmth and near-affection washed over the Psi where she half hung in the hard safety of his arms. The gaze of his icy eyes melted for just long enough for it to be seen by the eager stare of the girl in his embrace, and then the winter returned; the warmth of emotions cut off, the pools of silver froze over again, leaving only the chill and the heat of hard muscle.

Blood sluggishly crept along the stubbled jaw, snaking its deliberate way through the prickle of short growth beneath the near-pout of the caramel lips. It hung on the tension of its own strength, then careened down, away from the ichor-splashed face to dash itself upon the pale curve of the solemn face turned up to the precipitous visage.

The scattered spray of the droplets stained her pale cheek in a spattered ring, the touch lukewarm and salt, a mark left by a soft kiss from some specter in the gore bedecked corridor. Her pearl teeth tugged at her pallid lip; she flinched away from the tepid splash.

And then the mountain of flesh bent close, his breath a stygian blast from some fiery pit searing her alabaster cheek before his smoldering mouth touched the smudge of crimson.

A heavy hand brushed the door.

The light was dazzling.

Floodlights illuminated the shuttle bay, the barest hint of the light gleaming blinding bright around the door, immaculately glaring in even the lights of the hall. It slithered around the cracked door, reaching, groping, creeping along the marred, befouled wire finished metal of the bloodied corridor. It bubbled over the sagged, slumped, crumpled flotsam of wasted, massacred, mangled meat, gleaming dully on the rusted stains upon the paled, bluing corpse, drowning the faint glow of the smoke with the incandescent flood.

The crack of light etched into the dark-drained skin of the smaller girl, soothed over the darker, caramel gold of the killer's hide. It yearned, fighting to rush, wild as a deluge, around the damming door. Radiance slammed against the cracked door, searching, seeking, questing for the Slam paled flesh it seemed to sense just out of its fullest glory. Its feverish fingers singed, blistered into the silver eyes.

The barest hint of sound pulled itself through Spook's throat. Her hoary eyes squeezed shut; pressure lines welling up with a sudden dampness as she fought the shocking kiss of the light.

The warmth of her slight frame pressed against Riddick, and he deeply drafted in the scent of her, sharp with the twinge of pain, dark with the aroma of blood, steely with the bouquet of death, hinted with the musk of his own scent upon her.

Faint scraps of sound crept along on the tail of the light, secret whisperings and echoes, suggestions of what lay ahead. Boot soles scuffing, leather creaking. The silent swish of liquid in metal, the low murmurs of people trying to keep someone in the same room from overhearing. Cards purring as they were bridged. The groan of a chair beneath shifting weight, the creak of a table under someone's elbows. A sigh near to the door, a low sound, a young sound, from an inexperienced throat, unburdened with the passage of years.

The hushed clatter of metal chits striking one another, of chits being tossed at a pile, tagged on the heels of the sigh, a quiet song with pauses as varied and peculiar as different vocalists. Sounds that had the peculiar ring of small sounds in a large space, of sounds clustered in origin despite space to spread out in.

Sound was harried by scents of sweat, of boot polish, scuffed leather, tarnished metal and oil. The harsh lye soap used to wash clothes in Slam. The subtly, pervasively bitter-sweet scent of the standard issue soaps. The close scent of sweat. The smell of bodies pressed close.

There was a slight scent of burnt air, and stale air. The crackling smell of ozone. A not-quite charred smell. The smell of cooled metal that had been heated. The scent of chemical flame long since doused. The smell of old wiring, eaten by power, left to rot like the entrails of some gutted beast. The smell of still warm metal, newly hardened.

Spook stiffened against the burnished chest.

Beneath the stony gaze of the substantial, bloodstained butcher, her eyes took on that strangely blurred stare; unfocussed or focused on something no one else could ever hope to see. She leaned heavily against him, her frail weight pressing her warmth through the gory, blood-stiffened canvas of his shirt. Slowly her lips moved.

"Always the same," she barely breathed the words, low and sullen. "They just sit there, act like I'm the same kind of trash in there. Treat me like a bloody burden every shift, like I asked to be assigned with old codgers like them. Not like I don't know that they'd trade me for a half dead dog anyway. I'm the only one here who takes this shift seriously." There was a hint of petulance in the low pitched tones, mopish malcontent directed at whatever she could see. "Those three never take guard duty in the hangar seriously anyway. 'If anything were to get here from in there,'" she took on a nasal, superior quality, "'it'd never be able to get out. The flight deck would seize control of the shuttle even if whatever was flying it managed to get it launched.' Pah."

And then she sagged, hanging in the crush of his arm, tightened to hold her upright.

"Only four guards in there," her voice was weak, quiet, mumbled into his broad chest. "The shuttles have standard H-Seven-Zero-Eight-Q navigation on them; basic military grade shuttle. The hangar houses 6 of them, with the launch shaft at the end opened on either end by security codes. It pressurizes for launch off the asteroid."

A low snorted growl was her only answer.

"I have the code, too." She turned her face up to his, her wide, nervous, hopeful eyes meeting the dark and brooding shadows in his.


	33. Chapter ThirtyThree

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick sigh and I promise to return him in the same condition I borrowed him in. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

It was a maelstrom of flashing metal and spraying crimson.

The door slammed against the wall, Riddick's broad shoulders filling the gap of the frame for only a split second, a snarl splitting his feral face, his cold eyes showing fierce anticipation, the shiv gleaming, shining, in the bright halogen light.

In only a few strides he had leapt among the three at the table, three who were dropping cards with shouts of alarm, reaching for gauges, eyes wide with surprised, frenzied distress.

The huge tawny hand closed around the neck of the first, pulling the man close to the killer's snarling face, pulling him onto the wicked blade, pulling him into death's embrace. A choked cough, mingled with a small cry brought up blood and air, a small spray of it spattering the already blooded face. His only response was to force the shiv upward, still snarling, a slight hint of a pleased gleam showing in the deep silvered pools, letting a little more light out of the shadowed face.

A shot rang out, the stench of ozone, the ring as the shot went wild, striking metal. The guage fell from the deadening fingers.

The guard spasmed, then went limp.

The snarl vanished, ice descending over the face of stone as he dropped the first guard, a wet, squelching, sucking sound as he casually pulled the shiv from the man's ribs.

Twin barrels of two gauges stared him steadily in the face, the men behind them sweated but steady. One began to back away, still training the guage, backing towards a panel on the wall.

Again the lip lifted, quivering, baring gleaming teeth.

The hand shifted on the shiv.

And he lashed his hand, sending the shiv in a hissing arc to burry itself deep into the chest of the backing guard even as the inmate struck the ground, the shot ringing out over his back.

Without pause he bulled forward, fingers pushing with booted feet against the floor, his shoulder striking soft tissue and muscle beneath the sternum, his back forcing the guage up, pushing the barrel away. Riddick could hear the grate of his clenched teeth as he pressed, pounded forward, the guard skidding in resistance attempts, fumbling to bring the guage into a position where it could effectively be used against the behemoth of muscle and bloodthirsty balefire.

Muscle screamed out and bone gave with a sickening crack when the wall met them with equal force to the driving charge.

The guage roared again.

Growls accented the impact of solid fists against flesh; blows struck hard as stones, flesh yielding, ribs cracking, breaking, with stomach-turning, appalling wet cracking sounds.

And still the hard fists descended onto the guard, raining in a hail of increasingly sodden red mist.

All around him, Riddick could smell that metallic tang, feel it settle onto him like the gentle touch of a familiar friend, see it dripping from his hands, from his face. He tasted it on his breath, the taste of life being drawn in with each breath as surely as the trampled mass beneath him breathed it out, slowly, painfully, with each ragged breath.

An explosive snort, like a stallion pleased with its ability, accompanied the popping as his titan frame straightened.

A gasp, quiet, barely more than a sigh, brought him wheeling, crouching instinctively, his hand reaching out to wrench the shiv from the nearby corpse where it awaited his hand.

Spook stood face to face with the young guard, one of her pale hands resting on his chest, her frame close to his.

Her other arm was around his ribs, and she was gently lowering him to the floor, murmuring something Riddick couldn't work out. There was a look of shock on her face, and she looked more pale than usual. The young guard was mouthing something at her.

Her eyes met the stony stare of Riddick with a look of petrified fear, and she froze, crouched over the young man who was still franticly trying to say something to her.

Riddick's boots struck the floor dully as he approached them, watching Spook cringe away from him, her muscles shaking more with each step that brought him closer to her.

He towered over her, his eyes still boring into hers. His muscles were knotted. Blood dripped off his hands, off the shiv held tightly in his hand.

She simply froze, staring up at him, cowering, quailed beneath his viscous stare.

Still the guard tried to speak.

Riddick's frozen eyes moved slowly from the girl to the guard.

He lay on his back, his eyes wider with terror, mouth moving without sound. A small hint of red colored his lips, but there was a staining at his throat.

Where the hilt of her shiv stood silent testimony to actions unseen, the long blade bloodied to the finger guard.

She followed his stare, blanched at the sight of her blade sheathed in the throat, the pooling fluid beneath his head.

Riddick bent to take the knife, his other hand reaching to the girl, taking them both up with equal ease.

He carefully wiped her blade on his leg, slipped it back into its place at her thigh. His fingers then touched her face, took a hold of her chin, brought her face close to his.

"Don't think of it as murder, rabbit. Think of it as survival."

Still with his arm around her, he turned, shifted his focus to the hangar.

The shuttles hung from an overhead rail, a track that ran from one end of the bay to the other, and presumably partway up the launching shaft. The wings were folded over the tops, like the wings of the giant beetles they looked like, resting dormant from the rail. The fronts were domed over the flat belly, the windows of the front looking like dulled eyes. The back hatches were closed.

At the end of the bay, there were large blast doors, thick enough to withstand the depressurization as well as the engine blasts from the shuttles. The last in a line of six shuttles nosed up to those doors.

And it was to that one that Riddick half-led, half dragged her.

The keypad at the back hatch was simple, and the code Spook mumbled opened it.

The controls were just as easily manipulated beneath Riddick's hands.

The blast doors opened.

The shuttle eased along the rail.

The doors closed behind it, and there was a rush of depressurization around the metal carapace, then the roar of engines.

The little shuttle fled the System Lambda Asteroid Maximum Penitentiary.


	34. Chapter ThirtyFour

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, I'm simply borrowing him for my own nefarious purposes. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

"We've got an unauthorized launch! Hangar bay, please respond." Static crackled on the frequency. "Hangar bay, do you read!"

Still the quiet hiss of static, the crackle where voices should sound.

"Shuttle Eight-Omega-Lambda, do you copy?" another static-filled pause. "Fuck! Send someone down to check the bay!" An alert lit on the panel before the young man. "Shit! The shuttle can't be brought under override control! It's crashing! Get a pilot and guard crew down there now! We're getting whoever has that shuttle before the asteroid does!

Booted feet skidded to a halt within the bay, horrified murmuring breaking out as the three guards and pilot took in the open door, the shattered bodies, the bloodstains flowing, pooling, thickening on the metal floor.

"We've got a breach!" the voice was awed, shocked, scared. "How the fuck did this happen?"

"Oh god! It's worse!" Another man pointed down the hall, through the open door back into Slam, down the gauntlet of carnage. "Whoever did this did a damn thorough job. Left nobody to raise an alarm, but how they did it without someone raising hell…"

"Over here! Hurry! We've got to get out there! The shuttle's going down!" The young pilot was keying in the access code, opening the hatch to the shuttle now queued up to the launch doors. The guards jogged over, hopping with practiced ease into the shuttle, checking over their guages again as they settled into the interior.

They took up their places in the seats suspended from the framework, feeling them give slightly into the space behind them, between the framework they were bolted to and the curved shell of the shuttle. They grimly watched one another. The pilot keyed the hatch closed, slunk to the control panels, began fanning his fingers over the pads, the shuttle humming, shuddering, shivering to life.

"Yeah, control, this is shuttle Zero-Epsilon-Omicron, launching now."

The engines whined.

With a rolling heave, the shuttle began to move, the launch doors opening before the domed nose. The track rose upward. Ahead lay the launch shaft, lit by running lights, the track ending about halfway up its length.

With a dull, convulsing echo, the doors closed behind the shuttle.

The engines grew louder.

The small ship spread its wings, began to hasten in its ascent.

Ahead, the forward doors opened, clearing the view to the steady shine of stars, to the rising of the curve of the planed the asteroid orbited, shimmering through its atmosphere in greens with swirls of white. There was a slight dropping heave as the shuttle left the track and rushed away from the shaft, hurling itself out into the darkness, spinning beneath the pilot's hands to search for the swiftly descending insectile form of the falling shuttle that had escaped.

"Control, shuttle Zero-Epsilon-Omicron clear of the launch shaft, beginning reconnaissance sweep now."

And then a guard sputtered suddenly in the silence, blood rushing from his mouth, his eyes wide with shock. The other two in the cabin reached to their harnesses, unhooking themselves from the seats, cursing, fingering their guages.

Then another guard, across the way, coughed, spattering blood, falling forward, his guage clattering across the floor.

The back of his seat was stained, coated with wetly gleaming crimson, the same crimson that now soaked through his shirt, onto the floor.

"Fuck!" The last guard rose, his eyes wide, moving to the center of the compartment, his boots making a strange ringing on the curved floor, his frame whipping back and forth, training the guage first on one side, then the other. "get this beast down NOW! We've got company here!"

But silence was his only reply.

The guard whipped around again, facing the pilot's compartment.

Leaning in the gated doorframe between the two compartments was a hulking behemoth of a man. He stared at the guard with eyes as steady and as chill as a snakes, casually tilting his head to watch the guard. Blood dripped from the shiv that he held in a relaxed grip in his hand, his wrists against the metal, his colossal frame leaning slightly forward through the gap in the grate.

A small bunch of wires were held in his other hand.

"Sorry, boss." A woman's voice, quiet and soft behind him. "He got up too fast."

A soft hand fluttered to alight on his shoulder, the thumb against the nape of his neck, a hand cool against his skin.

"Please, drop the guage." Her voice was gentle, a silken caress against his ear. "I tend to get nervous when people point weapons at him, and if you were to shoot, we'd both die in flaming glory."

The guard spared a glance to the pale form beside him. Her eyes were fixed on the larger man, regarding him with a strange light in the shined gaze.

The massive killer brought the attention back to him with a harsh snort.

"The pilot's dead, and your little playmates are cold on the floor of this ship. The most you can hope for is to last until I've landed somewhere more appropriate so I can take care of the bodies." The guard's knuckles turned white as his grip tightened.

He glanced at the girl again.

Her eyes were half closed, something like a smile on her lips as she listened to the rumble of his voice. The smile was nothing, he decided, to do with what the cruel-voiced murderer was saying, but instead everything to do with her own contentment at the sound of his voice, perhaps something else, the hint of triumph barely visible.

He turned his attention back to the man.

He had moved his titan body closer; he was now only a stride or so away, his vicious eyes staring down from the tawny face. His muscles were relaxed, yet held ready. His stance spoke volumes of his ease, his complete mastery of the situation, his complete disregard for the guard who stood before him.

He tossed the wiring before the man.

"They can't recall this shuttle."

He didn't speak; he purred his words, low and cold, full of his satisfaction, tinged through with his victory.

Viper fast, the guage was ripped out of the guard's numb hands, whipped around, re-aimed.

Then the barrel was dropped, the guage cast behind the massive man, into the pilot's compartment, where it skidded up against the limp arm of the cast form of the pilot, the butt of the guage resting near the death-filmed, staring eyes.

And the killer held out his empty hand.

The girl, for she was small, young despite the gauntness of her and the age in her eyes, moved closer to him, floating, drifting into the nook of the heavy arm.

And two pairs of shined eyes fixed him, one set quiet, calm, glowing with a certainty, the other dark, brooding, watching him intently.

The killer bowed his head, eyes still on the guard, murmured into the girl's ear. She tilted her head back, smiled, rubbed her cheek against his.

And he turned away, stepping back into the cockpit, stooping onto the controls.

"Ghost his ass, rabbit."


	35. Chapter ThirtyFive

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, I'm simply borrowing him for my own sick amusement. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

The pilot's chair creaked as he shifted his tawny bulk, glancing again at the star charts arrayed before him. Thick fingers twitched slightly as he swiftly calculated time, the same calculations he had been running for the last several hours.

It should have only taken them a standard hour at the most to realize that the pursuit ship had gone missing, and that was if the shuttle control personnel had really had their heads somewhere anatomically improbable.

Chances simply were that the diversion shuttle had only bought about twenty minutes.

He scowled into the empty space before him.

There weren't many settled worlds ahead of him. That was why he had chosen to escape into these lanes. Logic would dictate that he'd get to the closest settled planet and trade ships.

Pursuers would waste more time checking that probability, giving him even more of an advantage.

All he had to do was make it to one of the little run down spacer stops, where they dealt with all sorts of flotsam, where a government shuttle wouldn't raises an eyebrow when cashed, where they didn't keep records of who stopped where and why, where he could get a good, fast little galaxy-hopper skiff for cheap.

The shuttle, after all, was in good repair. Its model was common enough that with a coat of paint there would be little to identify its origins.

And the bloodstains wouldn't drop the price by much.

He'd already found a little mining planet, devoid of surface population, where he'd dropped the former crew. Dark side of the planet, no population, it was a safe bet it'd be a long time, if ever, until they were found.

He had searched the ship from tip to tail for any sort of tracking devices and had found nothing to suggest that they'd be able to cut into his lead that way before he dropped the ship.

He really just had to wait.

According to the star charts, the little spacer stop he was aiming for did it's business with mostly salvage ships, although a few of the regulated transport ships did make short refuel stops there.

He glanced down at his clothing.

It was hard with dried blood, stained, yet still recognizable as a prison uniform.

Stormy eyes grew darker.

The creak grew to a vociferous complaint as he heaved out of it, moving back through the grated partition, stepping over the huddled mass of Spook, glancing momentarily at her sleeping form, shivering on the curved deck, her head pillowed on her folded arms, her shoulders hunched close to her cheeks, knees pulled up close to her body.

He moved a few steps beyond her, to a small compartment.

Within it there were emergency supplies, from which he took water packets and a few rations bars. He started to close the lid, then paused, reaching in once more.

He tore open a packet, pulled out a thin silver blanket, tossed it out over the sleeping girl with a soft snort.

He took his shiv in his hand, carefully set it on one of the stained chairs, then shed the gore-stiffened shirt. Exchanging the shirt for his shiv again, he carefully moved his mass back to the pilot's chair.

The interior was chill.

The shuttle hadn't been made for long trips with only two bodies in it, that much was obvious; with a full belly, the little shuttle would have been plenty warm. It hadn't been designed to take long trips without full seats, so it hadn't been equipped to be heated.

_That'll drop the price a bit_.

The bridge of his nose wrinkled as his heavy brows furrowed over his deep eyes.

The hours were long out in space.

"'What of the hunting, hunter bold?'" she settled her hand on his shoulder, leaning over him, her chin just to the side of his temple.

"'Brother, the hours were long and cold.' Sleep well, little rabbit?"

"I suppose. Did you really read all of my books, or just the parts that I quote?" That ghost of a smile played across his face. One had reached up to her shoulder, tugged, pulled her off balance and into his lap, a tumbled crash of limbs against him. She squirmed, settled against his chest, her arms around his shoulders, her cheek against his neck.

"Where are we going?"

"Far away, Spook. We stop at a little outpost, shady place, sell this piece for scrap or whatnot, get ourselves something less noticeable. And a change of clothes." Hair caught on stubble when she nodded, the gossamer strands trailing over his face, her laughter as she pulled them free washing over him, warm as life itself. He could smell her so clearly, a soft undercurrent of spice, of gentleness, underwriting the smell of blood and death. "After that, we just keep moving. Find us a world where they won't know us, where they don't know Riddick escaped with the help of a Spook."

"Does that place exist?"

He bent his head to her shoulder, string out at the endless expanse of stars, of swirling galaxies.

Any moment now there would be the report over the Comm waves, about the only escape ever from Slam, about the murderer Richard B. Riddick, and how he had escaped. It would announce the bounty on his head. It would alert a thousand worlds that he was free, and unite a thousand worlds against him.

It would be just him, and this one Psi, against them all.

"It has to, rabbit. It has to."


	36. Chapter ThirtySix

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, much as I wish I did. I'm just borrowing him for a little while, and then I'll return him to his rightful owners in more or less the same condition I found him in.. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Dirt, filth, and grime.

Everywhere he turned, the scum of space, human and refuse, cluttering the outpost. Muscle for hire, repair workers, shifty eyes salesmen peddling second hand, probably wanted craft. Spacers down on their luck and selling their last, nervous flyers handing over command codes to crafts sold unseen, lanky, malnourished women watching with narrowed eyes, calling in wheedling tones.

Many had the haunted look of those pressed into service on ships then dumped, the slightly wide eyed, near-fearful expression. Several were simply dregs of humanity, waiting their chance to find another crew like themselves. Old and young, all with hardened eyes and weathered faces.

Survivors, all of them.

He fit right in.

The outpost reeked of dank, seedy squalor, of the darkest of things done in the darkest of corners. Of the dust from the red soil and storms outside, of the gasping of a dying people clinging to life on a planet not meant to harbor life. The air was filled with the fragrance of sweat and fear, of aggression, adrenaline, grease, oil, burnt metal.

Spacers looked to Riddick with caution, mild curiosity, mistrust. Some moved closer, to get a better look, see if there was anything being obviously carried to be hawked, some skittered away, watching him with wild eyes.

A few nodded, slow cautious greetings speaking silent novels of appraisal and wariness. Dealings stopped whenever they drew within earshot, the parties involved glowering at the pair until they were sure they had moved again out of hearing. A few older spacers leaned on trunks, scrapped pieces of hulls, and watched, their eyes dark and brooding over the body of the girl who scuffed her tread in Riddick's shadow.

Spook clung to his side, just behind his elbow, her eyes fixed on his arm. Her steps were unsure, lacking his brash confidence as he strode through the narrow thoroughfare, his eyes alert behind shielding goggles bought for the meager credits culled from the bodies of the guards. She watched the back, clad in an undershirt salvaged from the last guard exed, stained with blood at the throat, spatters down the front of the white material.

As for her, she wore cast of trews of uniform grey, rolled at the cuffs so her bare feet wouldn't catch on the long legs, a shirt, ripped at the collar, but unstained, a little loose but more snug, looted from off the pilot, her dark hair tied back with a strip of rust-colored canvas.

He paused a few times, murmuring in low, gruff tones with one or another of the spacers, who all nodded and growled their answer, pointing down the path further, towards a pale blue glow.

The glow came from the eerie, flickering glow of torches at a repair yard, surrounded by a semicircle of docking bay doors. There were several workers in the yard, only one of whom spared the pair a glance when they entered the yard.

The one shut off her torch, shed the heavy gloves and mask, stepped forward, brows lowering as she studied the large man and trailing girl.

She was tall, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with whipcord muscle showing under skin paled by artificial lights, pinked by torch heat. Her straight, corvid-hued hair was tied in a knot on the back of her skull, a few wisps tucked behind her ears. Drab colored tight fitting pants with large pockets covered long legs. Her shoulders were bared by a black shirt whose sleeves had been forcibly removed at some earlier date.

Her slim lips were pursed as they neared, indigo eyes squinting, dark slashes of her brows lowered over the narrow, hawkish nose. She folded her arms over her chest, scowling darker, rocking back on booted heels.

"A bheil sibh ag iarraidh ìm?" Her chin lifted slightly, the lips taking on an even harsher frown, her jaw flexing.

"We were told to talk to Dillon. Is he here?"

"'S mise Dillon - I'm Dillon. What you want, spacer?"

Riddick tilted his head to the side, taking in her stance, her feet at shoulder width, arms still folded assertively across her chest. Her eyes challenged him, boring into his face with calm hostility.

"Is there somewhere we can talk?" With a snort, she nodded once, her eyes not leaving his face, hand gesturing casually to her right, to a small lean-to made from hull scraps.

It was quite cramped with the three of them within, and there were only two seats; there was a cargo box near the door they entered, and a navigators chair next to a large window, nearly a door itself. Dillon took the chair, crossing her legs, hands resting on the arms of the chair, nails drumming the padded metal.

"Who sent you? If it was Brett, I swear-"

"We have a ship to sell or trade. Shuttle, H-Seven-Zero-Eight-Q nav standard, slight wiring problem. We got it in a trade ourselves, need something a little better suited to a long trip."

Another silence, the pair watching each other, her with cautious wariness on her sharp features, him with a chill calm, his only hint of impatience in the slow clenching of his fist where it rested on Spook's shoulder as she sat on the box, him standing over her.

"What sort of wiring problem, spacer?" She had stopped tapping her little solo on the armrest and was now leaning forward, some of her cool impatience sloughing off, her eyes warming a little as she drank in the deal before her.

"Computer short, doesn't impact navigation or anything critical."

A curt nod from her.

"And you'll want a galaxy hopper in trade."

"Or something like."

She leaned back, steepling her long fingers before her face, the chair shifting back slightly. Again her brows lowered over the aquiline eyes, her lips pursing in that frown. She studied the large man, looking over the massive arms, the broad shoulders, the barrel chest, followed the line of his arm to the girl, her pale face downcast, strangely gleaming eyes glancing between the man's heavy boots and the surroundings, flitting about with a severe case of nerves. Occasionally the girl would shift her head, as if she was hearing someone call a name she hadn't quite heard, despite the relative silence; the only sounds to be made out were the sounds of work in the yard.

And when she would twitch in that manner, the heavy, calloused hand would stroke her hair for a brief moment, then fall back to her shoulder.

"All right. Which berth is your shuttle in? I'll take a look at it, and if it passes muster, we'll get the codes from you and give you the codes for a CG thirty-four-eighty I've got here. The ship's in good condition, just not too pretty, and I think you two are in a bit of a hurry. Poke your heads to the fourth berth from here off the yard to see it."


	37. Chapter ThirtySeven

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

_ There's got to be some rule somewhere that says that spacecraft have to be as uncomfortable as possible. _

She hung, again, from a bar above a hatch, one knee hooked around it, scowling darkly at the floor above her.

_Or at least as inconvenient as they can make them._

"Boss, what just happened to the grav unit?" He was growling in the circuit-laden interior of the ship; banging, metallic echoes rang in klaxons through the corridors. "Last time I checked, I wasn't supposed to look UP at the floor…"

It was becoming a disturbingly regular occurrence. A quick tally hashed up to 3 times in the last 7 standard days.

At least now they understood why there were rungs at regular intervals along the ceilings.

Her hair hovered before her eyes, waving slightly in the air currents that flowed through the dark interior of the ship, floating in a silent mocking of the nearly constant attempts to find the persistent source of the eternal malfunction.

The snarled curses were growing more creative with each occurrence, in a seemingly inverse relationship to the length of time it took for him to resort to percussive maintenance on the grav unit.

It sounded like the nearest thing at hand this time was a conduit pipe from some wiring he'd been working on.

It had a slightly more musical quality than the squawking clang that the wrench had made a few days ago, and the chiming tones of today's session reminded her a little of bells. She could tolerate it for a little bit.

They were still at least a week out from the next outskirter base. That meant a week more of an angry, increasingly violent man with nowhere to escape to. That wasn't a prospect she looked forward to.

He was ever more moody, sulking about the skiff, glowering, striking randomly at the walls. He spared her a snort of greeting most times, occasionally a quick, rough caress over her cheek and a mumbled "rabbit," but mostly he just snarled through the tight quarters and spent hours staring out into the endless expanse of stars with brooding silvered eyes.

She feared for anyone who looked at him wrong when they found something remotely reflecting civilization.

_Then again, I suppose if this skiff had a sweet spot he'd have found it by now._

With a shake of her head, Spook kicked off the doorjamb, gliding towards the control room, trying to shake the strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The nagging ache, like a lump of slagged iron, weighed heavy in her belly. The concern of it showed behind the reflections in her eyes, in the distracted movements of her daily mannerisms.

It poked at her; a thing she should know, should recognize, but could not. It was something just below the surface of consciousness. Like all she was seeing were ripples, but should know what was causing them. Ripples that had been lapping at the edges of her thoughts for days.

She clicked the four point harness into place, sighing at the absence of the customary creak of the command chair, the normal comforting subtle give of the chair as it took her weight. Her hair floated about her face, a mousy-brown cloud that wisped into her vision and tickled her neck. Before her spread endless wastes of stars, glowing dully at her, sullen points of light echoing her misgivings.

Silver eyes wandered over the sensor readings, settling on one point.

There was an abnormality.

Off and on for a few days the sensors would ping something, just on the edge of their range. It tended to be interpreted as flotsam, something that was abnormal, but not to be worried about. Yet it seemed, as she looked over the logs, to always appear in roughly the same place, a bare trace of something, like an ice formation or some such. It normally appeared for one or two quick pings, then vanished, slipping out of sensor range, for all the worlds like a piece of everyday flotsam.

It seemed absurd for it to have been, over the course of days, the same piece of something, but the readings were all identical.

And an hour ago the sensors had picked it up in their wake again. But it hadn't vanished this time; it was still there now, trailing behind them. She reached forward, tapping at the sensors board.

Still there.

Not an anomaly in the sensors, in fact the sensors read that it was ever so slowly gaining on them. Her fingers flew over the controls, bringing up reading after reading.

Nothing more than what she had before, but it was definitely moving in their slipstream, slowly creeping up behind them. She pulled up the records of the communications scans.

And there it was; a low grade, nearly constant flow of transmissions, like a data-feed trace. A few more keyed commands, and she'd tapped into it.

On the screen flickered two things: the faces of herself and Riddick, and a brief account of their actions. His was the only name; she was simply listed as an accomplice.   
**  
Richard B. Riddick escaped from System Lambda Asteroid Maximum Penitentiary. Subject is male, 1.88 meters, 88 kilos, dark hair. Escaped in the company of an unknown female, 1.6 meters, 75 kilos, brown hair. Richard B. Riddick is highly dangerous, and is to be treated with utmost caution. Subject has proven to kill without provocation. Subject escape has initial released bodycount of 28. All victims were male, various ages and races. Female subject's role in escape unknown at this time. High credit reward for capture, higher for unharmed pair.**

But there was more data flowing in now.

Details about her.   
**  
Warning: female subject is to be regarded as highly dangerous. Female subject is unidentified Psionic with unknown potential. Believed to be mentally unstable, female subject assisted in the escape, contributing to the high death count of the incident. Advised for only trained Psi handlers to confront. Report known position to GPLE, allow GPLE trained enforcers to capture. Repeat. Female subject is unknown Psi. Allow trained GPLE officers to capture. Do not confront.**

"Boss! We've got a problem."


	38. Chapter ThirtyEight

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

The darkness was suffocating. 

She wrapped her arms tighter around her, shivering slightly, blinking owlishly. The shine barely outlined the solid bulk of the bed; all the lights that could be killed had been. Only the steady thrum of the engines, running unmonitored, could be heard, their work shuddering through the ship, through the wall that the slight form of the girl huddled against. 

Riddick had left her there, cowering, the mass of the bed between her and the door. He was stalking the corridors. 

His words to her had been harsh, threatening, but a touch lingering on her cheek, where the warmth of it still glowed, had softened the cruelty of the killer. 

But still the darkness was too close, too familiar. It smothered her, coupling with her inaction to oppress. It was crushing, bringing up all the darkness of her memories, calling back to the pit she had fled at the side of tawny death. 

She shook herself, briskly rubbing her palms against her shoulders, blinking to free herself of the weight of memories, the cobwebs that the remembering filled her with. 

A heavy sound echoed through the hull, then, again, only the shuddering groan of the engines. Silver eyes widened in the dark. 

Always more death. Always more blood. 

Her eyes could already see the small shuttle painted with the blood of their doomed pursuer, just as she could already hear the bellowing roar of triumph from the throat of the brawny terror as he stood over the kill. His eyes would flash, bright and wild, the freedom of the blood taking him, the ease into which he fit into his role as Sammael's right hand guiding him to his prey. 

No sounds interrupted her thoughts, no death cries, no heavy footfalls of fleeing man, no dull echo of a body hitting the decks. The quiet flowed through the ship, easing into the quarters in which she curled in hiding. 

Again she shivered. 

How long had she been cowering out of view? 

_Long enough. More than long enough for my backside to start to ache._

She squirmed, not daring to do more than that to shift her sore body, to rearrange complaining muscles. Not a sound was made, not a hair visible over the bulk of the bed. Her bottomless eyes closed. 

_It's taking so long... Where are they? This ship is not so large that they can circle each other... Riddick should have found him by now..._

There was a soft hiss as the door opened, nearly silent, but still audible. A boot lightly scuffed on the metal floor. 

Her breath caught in her throat. 

Another tentative step, another scrape of boot sole on metal. 

She could hear the breathing, forced to be slow, trying to be quiet. Air rushing through flared nostrils. The smell of ozone caught her nose when she dared a slow breath. Faint light, a cold yellow, glowed in the room, casting the barest tinge of color on the wall. 

Another footfall. 

A sharp cry ripped itself from her as a strong hand grasped her hair, yanking her up from behind the bed. She felt something cold and flexible wrap around her throat; heard a soft, metallic jingle, the pin of a buckle. 

The stranger dragged her over the bed, tightening the strap cruelly about her throat. 

She screamed again; the chatter in her mind had gone still. She reached out for Riddick. It was like staring into a snowstorm looking for a white mouse; she could reach nothing. 

A heavy hand struck her face, then again as she floundered for the blade at her thigh. With rough efficiency the blade was taken and thrown aside. The cruel hand ran over her, searching for another shiv. Each cry she uttered brought another slap, another twist of the leather around her neck to cut short the cry. 

"No more games, girl. Where is he?" 

"Right here." 

The deep growl surrounded them. 

The man swung around, trying to keep the still gasping girl between himself and the escaped convict. He was backing towards the wall. 

"Surrender! I'll kill her!" 

"Shoot her, strangle her, whatever. She was useful." There was a hint of a chuckle in the deep, rasping baritone. "And she was fun. But you and I both know that she's worth a whole lot more alive, so I don't think you're going ghost her. 

"In fact, I believe she's worth more than I am, am I right? Or is it that you're more scared of a girl than you are of the big bad, the infamous Riddick, and that's why you searched her out first?" 

He was circling slightly, his eyes gleaming in the faint light of the chem light the man had at his waist. A shadow of a smile touched his mouth, pulling at the corners of it. Silver eyes met wide silver, then his eyes moved up to stare into blue, a deep penetrating stare; the kind that dared the recipient to look away first. 

Dogs, they stared, the one behind her snarling his rage into her hair, still holding tight to the strap around her throat, keeping her between the larger man and himself. 

Riddick's face was a mask of calm, his eyes glinting, gleaming, shining in the dark. 

"Where you going to go? You got a wall at your back and me between the door and you. You think I won't go through her to get you? She don't want to go back. It'd be a mercy to kill her first." Her nostrils flared with alarm. Her eyes pleaded. She struggled against the man behind her, felt the strap around her throat cut into her skin. Flashes of light and dark danced between her and Riddick. 

Gasping, choking, Spook balanced on her toes, her hands clutching at the strap, her silver eyes staring with shock and horror at the bronzed man. Her nostrils flared like a mare's upon catching the scent of a pack of wolves, but only the barest gasp of air flowed. 

It was an amazing burst of speed when it finally came. 

There was no sound save the sudden thunder of feet on the deck, and a blur of tawny muscle flared like lightning. 

Spook choked as she felt herself pressed between the pair of bodies; Riddick's broad barrel crushing against her, the narrower man desperately trying to hold his ground behind her. The searing heat of Riddick's flesh arced around her side, and the man holding her twisted, throwing her deeper into the onslaught of hard muscle, his shoulder digging into her back like a blade. 

The stranger choked, coughed, pressed between the slight girl and the wall before the raging storm of the crush of Riddick's charge. 

A small sound escaped Spook as she was dropped to the deck, her cheek ignominiously meeting with the cold floor, air rushing into her lungs. 

Above her, there was a flurry of blows, the sound of hardened flesh striking flesh. She dimly felt a splash of heat against her arm, heard the faint hiss of pain through the throbbing pulse ringing through her aching body. 

Someone hit the floor by her leg. 

And Riddick swore into the darkness. 

"Bastard broke my shiv." 


	39. Chapter ThirtyNine

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

Riddick bent over her, lightly stroking her hair, his brows low over his brooding eyes. In his other hand he held the strap of leather, twisting it around his fingers, thumb resting against a box of metal on it. 

Her skin was pale as ivory against the pillows, her dark hair in tangles, her pale throat already striped with a red-purple streak. Her breathing was rasping, shallow. Her silver eyes glowered suspiciously from the shadows beneath her roosting brows. 

"This," she croaked, "is the second time since you came into my life that someone has tried to strangle me." An eyebrow quirked up, letting a little gleam of light reflect from the silver surface. "Can we please try to not let it happen again?" 

His mouth twisted, his fingers pausing on her hair. 

"Hey, I saved you again." 

"If moving didn't make my head explode, I would kill you." 

A flash of teeth preceded the rumble of laughter from the giant. Again he loomed over her, brushing his lips against her hair briefly before rising from his seat on the edge of the bed. He stooped, a calloused hand catching the limp wrist of the crumpled body on the floor, lifting the form to his shoulder. 

"Did you mean it?" 

His head turned towards her, his silver eye glinting over his shoulder, a grunt of curiosity snorting from his nostrils. He shifted the weight of the body, turning a little more to look at the thin girl. 

"When you told him to ghost me. When you said you'd kill me yourself." 

"'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.' I meant it when I said I'd kill you rather than let him take you back, rabbit. You lost too much of yourself in there, gave up too much coming out." There was a strange tone to his voice, one she hadn't heard before; it was quietly sad, the tone of someone who has seen something they wish they could forget. His eyes darkened as he looked over his shoulder at her. 

"'If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'" She bowed her head, hair shielding her face from his questing silver gaze. Her fingers worried the thin blanket beneath her; her toe tapped nervously against her other heel. She studiously kept her eyes turned down. 

He stayed frozen for another long moment, brows low over his eyes, watching her from the corner of his eye before again resettling the bulk of the bounty hunter's corpse onto his shoulder. 

"I'm gunna go jettison this waste in his ship." 

His footsteps faded down the corridor before she lifted her face again, staring at the open door, her cheeks damp. She blinked several times, shivering with each breath, her shoulders trembling. 

One hand scrubbed over her eyes before she gave herself a vigorous shake and let out a wavering breath. She squared herself, lifting her chin. 

"'There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.'" 

The room smelled of blood. There was a dark blot on the floor, one that her eyes fixed on with mild curiosity. In the center of it lay a small twist of leather. 

Leather with a metal housing on it that was soon in her long hands, being turned before the bottomless eyes. The leather was supple, well cared for, but scuffed. It was wet, darkened and slimy with blood. The buckle was non-locking; whoever wore it would be able to remove it themselves unless otherwise restrained. The housing was dull, tarnished. It had small, dark, coppery-smelling stains on it that were old and dry next to smears of fresh crimson. 

She heard the faint crunch of his boots down the corridor. Quicksilver eyes gazed at the hulking man as he entered, holding the collar out towards him. 

"Who was he? He knew enough to bring this." The large man took it, looking it over again. 

"Inhibitor?" She just nodded, her hair brushing her cheek. "Some merc. His papers said his name was William J. Johns." 


	40. Chapter Forty

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

One spaceport looked just like another in design; the only real difference that Spook had ever noticed were the faces of the people occupying them. And in the downtrodden ports they made their stops in, all the faces were stark, staring, unfriendly, with an air of uncaring and never any curiosity. 

In the beginning she had made careful mental notes, wanting to keep track of all the new places she had been. But now, now they all blended together; the smells of dirt, unwashed bodies and garbage were the same in all of the new places she had been so eager to see. The same eyes, haunted, dark with malice, stared at her from the shadows of doorways. The same bars sold the same cheap alcohol to the same downtrodden old spacers. 

And Riddick always seemed so at home, so comfortable yet aloof. He would lead her through the narrow, dingy, litter-strewn alleyways without sparing a glance to anyone or anything and with calm and confidence pooling around him. 

But this time she was alone. 

The image of Riddick had been transmitted this far now, as well as a brief description of his "female accomplice;" they had picked up the transmissions a few days out of port, but needed supplies. 

So Spook changed her appearance. 

Her hair was dyed an odd shade of red, with streaks of a tawny through it; she remembered the deep mocking laugh when Riddick had seen it. But that didn't matter. 

She had the anti-radiation goggles favored by the deep-faring spacers over her silver eyes, and a heavy, tattered and patched jacket that she had found on another port. Nothing to set her apart from any other young spacer except the dingy part of the port she moved through. 

But now within her line of sight was the airlock that lead to the newer sections of the port, the parts where the well-to-do mingled with the only slightly unsavory and pretended that the downtrodden and broken didn't exist. There she would be able to slip in on the fringes, a little less prosperous than the others, but not enough to call attention to herself and not enough to be memorable. The kind of fringe spacer just right to do business on both sides of the airlock. 

The watchman at the far side of the airlock looked back at her, then nodded, turning away to key the lock. She gave him a smile as the door opened, murmuring a low thanks as she continued, feeling his mild curiosity. 

The bustle surrounded her. She felt the jostle around her, the laughing voices of reuniting friends lifting her spirits, the quick pace of daily life in the trade center immersing her in the rhythm of happiness and the peculiar elated calm. 

The lights were so very bright, even through the dark goggles she felt dazzled by them. And so many colours! She had been so long in the dark of space, the dank of the slums, the monotone of Slam that she had forgotten the vibrancy of simple colour and now all but lost herself in the rush of it. Nearly everyone in the crowd wore some bit of brightness, some splash of their individuality. It whirled around her like a storm, and she caught herself laughing in pure joy. A few in the crowd looked at her askance, but they quickly passed her out of mind as simply having been aship for far too long. 

She shook her head to clear the silly elation from it, laughing softly at herself for getting so caught up in such a foolish thing as colour. 

Around her was the trade center, where different vendors sold their wares to those who passed through, to anyone from spacer to passengers on their way to one of the planetside settlements. She eyed one shop with curiosity; a wide variety of small, brightly coloured avians called from within cages. Beside that shop was one boasting the newest fashions to come from the planet New Eden, where several girls were fondling some obviously expensive garment on one of the racks while chattering on about their lives with one another. 

She slid into another shop, where the man behind the counter looked up with a friendly smile. 

"Good day, spacer. Looking for a little something to spice up your life?" 

"Lenses. UV block, coloured." She glanced around the shop. 

"Ah. Tired of wearing goggles? Or do you have a shipmate you're trying to impress?" He smiled wider. "For you, I'd recommend the green ranges. Or perhaps, if you're seeking something more daring and dramatic, a violet or gold." 

She leaned over the counter, eyeing the colour samples, her nails tapping on the glass in idle fidgeting. 

"One pair in that honey-brown, one pair in that Eden green, one pair in the blue, one in Carrian Aqua. Where do you get these names?" 

The salesman just laughed, pulling out her selections. "34 creds, miss." 

"Thanks." She passed the card over the scanner, breathing a sigh of relief at the soft, low tone that signaled the acceptance of it. "Have a good day." 

She moved back into the crowd with ease. 

And then it hit her. 

A feeling that someone was watching her. 

She scanned the crowd, the tiers above her, the shops lining the way, but couldn't spot anyone. Nothing stood out, and she couldn't pinpoint the location, or even verify her feelings. 

With s shiver, she hurried her steps, finishing the restocking and near- running back to the slums and to the small shuttle where Riddick awaited her return. 


	41. Chapter FortyOne

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

The dark of the ship was normally comforting to her, a steady companion within the vast expanse of endless space, a close presence even in the face of the murderer she traveled with. Always with her, always the same, it held none of the terror that the darkness of Slam had instilled in her. 

But now she felt eyes in the dark. 

There was a fear about her, something gripping her like a cold winter wind. No matter where she huddled within the metal shell of the small ship, no matter if the normally strangely soothing savage presence of Riddick was near her or not, she felt trapped, hunted, haunted. 

In the darkness, she felt like a small child. 

She couldn't explain why, and her cold-eyed companion simply shrugged when she raised her voice in furtive attempts to explain the eerie sensation that followed her from system to system. She had begun to loath the crowded aisles of the port hubs that she had previously delighted in- for in them she found only a deepening, heightening of the feeling of cold, cruel eyes upon her. Her icy companion had definitely noted the change; his eyes had begun to show a new distance, a gaze of curious detachment when he viewed her. His touch was still heavy, and she still took strength and comfort from the rare caresses, but the stare only aggravated her discontent, made her feel more on edge and wary. 

For his part, he had noticed her strange wariness. It heightened his own; she was too often an early alarm, a hound baying at something unseen in the night without knowing what the threat was. Time had shown him that, and he learned his lessons swiftly; if she was leery of something, then there was something there. 

And he kept his hound close at hand. 

No longer did she wander out into the ports they made berth in alone; Riddick bundled himself in heavy clothes, wore the odd lenses that the girl had found and accompanied her into the bustle of the population. 

But only for brief visits. 

The scent of the bodies so close, the squalling of the people, the arrogance of the populace all drove him to retreat into his coldness, made him finger the handle of his shiv concealed within his clothes. With each stop he drew more within himself, and with each stop the girl became more uneasy. 

The chill of space, the void, the gentle thrum of the sensors, these things soothed the beast within him. For hours on end, he would stare off into the deep dark of space, the points of light reflecting back in a cold, unwavering shined stare. At his side, wrapped tightly in a worn blanket, her pale face resting against his thigh, Spook would doze. When the ship was exceptionally cold, she would rest in his arms, her cheek against his shoulder, her own eyes staring out to the same stars that reflected in his brooding eyes. 

His thoughts dwelled on the bounty hunter who had found them, on what that meant for his future. He pondered the anxiety of the girl, and on what her symbolism in his life was; the alerts always included her, painting her as Bonnie Parker to his Clyde Barrow. 

The last alert had sported a new body count; they definitely were on his trail, and had attributed several murders in the dark sections of ports correctly to him. They warned of his ruthlessness, of his unpredictability, of his bloodlust. They also warned that his "companion," described only, never named, was equally dangerous; the information that she was Psi had been eliminated. 

Curious. Very curious. 

He softly breathed in her scent, listening to her slow breathing as he read over the latest report about them, smiling slightly. Subjects have been positively identified in the Uriah, Camael, Rannas, and Enier systems. No pattern to their port choice has been identified at this time. Current count adds twenty-three new fatalities to the file, all attributed to Richard B. Riddick, in addition to the personnel murdered during the escape. 

Details regarding the female suspect have not been released at this time, but she is known to be a Psi of unknown level, according to earlier alerts. This female suspect is believed to have been a heavy factor in the escape of the pair, and reports place her still in his presence; an ID from the Atreides station in the Camael system has her still traveling with him, and, if witnesses are to be believed, she will react violently should the pair be threatened. 

If sighted, do not attempt to apprehend; contact GPLE immediately and allow trained GPLE personnel to apprehend these dangerous criminals. Repeat: These escaped criminals are highly dangerous. Do not attempt capture. 


	42. Chapter FortyTwo

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

_I know there's someone there. I know there's someone watching me. I know I'm being followed. They know who we are. They know why we're here. They know us. _

I know it. 

Why won't they show themselves? Why the hiding? Come out, damn you! Come into the open! Come out where I can see you! Come face me! She turned around and around, silver eyes wide as she stared into the darkness of the ship, her gaze fierce, hands clenched tight enough to ache. She felt the stares, each time spinning to see who dared to watch her, each time facing nothing. 

She wanted to scream, wanted to curse, wanted to do something. She glared and glowered into the empty interior, snarling impotently at the looming darkness. 

"Come face me!" 

Her voice echoed off the metal walls. It bounced around her, rising into a cacophony of sound, a storm of impotent fury. 

Something heavy sounded behind her; the familiar dull striking sound of a body dropping, the soft hiss of a final breath, the sound Riddick had once called the "rattle," although Spook had never understood why. 

It wasn't a sound she liked hearing under the best of circumstances, and on the fading tail of her shout, leaving only silence in its wake, it became even more distressing. She felt the stare upon her back. The air felt suddenly both cloying and frigid. 

Slowly, hesitantly, she turned. 

Her eyes widened in horror. She gasped for air. She could hear only the sound of her heart pounding. She felt a scream trapped in her throat. 

He lay on the floor, silver eyes dull, staring. Blood stained his slightly parted lips. It coloured his already dark skin, blossoming over his chest, pooling almost delicately in the rippled stomach. A cream-hued handle stood amidst the crimson, the metal of the blade completely hidden, sunk deep in the broad chest. 

Then the scream tore itself free. 

She covered her eyes with her clenched hands. Still the wail ripped through her, ricocheting along the corridors of the tiny shuttle. Slowly her hands dropped, and her eyes settled again on the still face. 

"who..." 

Laughter, cold, low, barely audible. It swelled around the girl, a vicious echo of the sight that she beheld with such chilling fear. 

"who are you?" 

The laugh faded to a low chuckle. 

Something moved in the shadows. 

A figure slowly stepped forward, bare feet carefully skirting the gloss of Riddick's blood on the shuttle floor. 

Slowly the face moved into the light. 

Spook stared deep into a familiar face. 

Her silver eyes met her own. 

Her scream was cut short as her head struck the low monitors above the control panels. 

"Rabbit! Are you all right?" His low rumble surrounded her. 


	43. Chapter FortyThree

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

She was trembling so hard beneath his hand, her breath coming in ragged gasps, skin icy cold despite the blanket she had been wrapped up in. Those expressive chromed eyes were squeezed shut, and a dampness weighted her dark lashes. She shuddered at the light, hesitant touch of his calloused hand, her breath coming in wracking shakes. 

"You alright?" he repeated, his low growl slightly tinged with concern. His brows huddled on the bridge of his nose, casting the reflective eyes into even deeper shadows, their sullen glint flashing at her in a mimicked glow of the control panels. 

She continued to shiver, but he was able to pull her back towards him. His coarse fingers lightly brushed her hair away from her face, and he peered up at her. 

"It's all right, rabbit. C'mon. Shush." Slowly she folded back onto his lap, her shaking stilling but her breath still convulsing her thin frame. His hands were hesitant, but he stroked her soft hair lightly. "Was just a dream, that's all. Want to tell me about it?" 

She shook her head, burying her face against his chest, but then began to murmur. 

"...was awful..." He could feel her shaking her head. "...blood... dark... all my fault..." The trembling began anew. 

"What was all your fault?" 

"...dead..." A sob heaved her shoulders, and she tightened into a ball for a few moments, shaking uncontrollably. 

Then she took a deep breath and straightened. She still trembled ever so slightly with her breath. Her pale face was blotched with red, but her eyes were steady when she looked into his face. She blinked a few times, worrying her lip. 

"For the last week or so, I've been having this... Feeling. I should have told you sooner, but I didn't. It's like someone is following me wherever I go, watching me. But there's never anyone there. I can't shake it. I even feel it here, when I know there's no one else here.   
"I can't explain it. I look, I feel, but there's never anything to find. Nothing. But I can't shake it." She shook her head, rubbing her palms briskly on her shoulders and upper arms. The dark hair fell forward again to curtain the luminous eyes. "And now, even when I sleep it comes.   
'I was here, in the shuttle. But I was all alone; you weren't anywhere to be found. And then I realized I was being followed. Wherever I went, wherever I turned, there was something following me in the dark that I couldn't see, something that was there but not there. And the more I searched, the more fruitless it was.   
"Until I heard something- the first sound besides me. It was you. Only you were dead." Another shiver claimed her for a moment, shaking her voice to silence. "My shiv was in your chest. And then someone started laughing. And it was me. I was looking at me, standing over you.   
"I think the abyss is finally gazing back." 

He was silent. There was a cold set to his stoney features, and a muscle in his cheek was slowly working. The frozen eyes stared deep into hers. 

"'People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.'" He withdrew a little more behind the frost, his eyes taking on the strange unfocus of deep thought. It even seemed that in his still he ceased to blink. His breath sounded in the silence, a syncopated rhythm behind her own staggered breaths. 

Spook tasted a sharp tang; she had worried her lip to blood in the smothering silence while the bronze killer stared out into the vastness of space trying to find something within himself. Her hands were sore with clenching them. 

Finally the statue of flesh moved. He turned his frozen eyes towards her,a strange melancholy reflectin up from the depths of them. "'It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.'" 


	44. Chapter FortyFour

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

She woke slowly, the scent of him strong and earthy about her but without even the fading hint of warmth from his body. The room was cool, the air heavy, scented with grease and dirt, tainted with the faint hint of uncirculated air. She held the coarse blanket to her with one shivering arm, pushing her lanky, mousy-hued hair out from in front of her silvery eyes with the other hand. 

Again, that nagging feeling pulled at the corner of her mind, taunting her with a hint of familiarity yet reeking of the unknown. It pulled at her attention, pulled her mind inward. 

There were not supposed to be strange things within her mind; she had spent far too much time reclused within herself to have left any regions unmapped, any corners of herself unexposed before the scrutiny of her inner self. She strode through herself towards it, striding the familiar trods within as she had many a night in the darkest pits. She had walked in here, amidst memories, far too often; she knew the steps forward and back, and still there was this strangeness here. _Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations - always darker, emptier, simpler than these;_ she narrowed her eyes. This was too bright, too clean. It didn't match. It was new. 

And that wasn't right. 

There was no "new" in this cluttered place; all the cobwebs came from ages past and all had their familiar reasons. But not this. 

This had a particular shininess to it, a sense of crisp newness, yet a antiseptic cleanliness. It shivered in a new light than the rest of her cluttered mind, a light that was familiar but not recognized. 

Spook moved towards it, a scowl on her face. 

It moved away just as surely, seeming to give a little shake, like a startled fowl might. 

_Curiouser and curiouser._

It pulled away from her; she lashed out to pin it to the floor of the microcosm within her mind, but it shrieked and twisted as she made contact. It leapt away from her mental grasp, fleeing to the outside of her, darting and twisting among the stars as Spook, baying with anger, fell upon its trail. 

It ducked and it rolled. It leapt aside as she rushed, doubling back upon itself. It left no track upon the sky, but she followed it as surely as a hound after a rabbit. 

And it dove planetward, spiraling and darting amidst a thousand of thousand voices, amidst a swarming horde of shining lives. They jostled as they moved in their little lives, busying themselves in their routines on the planet so far below her body, their minds bumping hers as they shimmered and shone before her. 

But she spared them not a glance; her eyes were fixed on a particular shine, a particular mental itch that she fully intended to scratch. 

And that one stared in shock at the mental face of the pale girl, hovering in the darkened room on the planet, silver eyes blazing at this intruder, this stranger, this interloper into her mind. 

Spook stared with rage at another Psi. 

A Psi in uniform. 

_I know you,_ her ghostly projection mouthed. 


	45. Chapter FortyFive

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

With a snarl on her lips, she leapt from the bed. A coarse howl ripped from her, a sound of rage and impending violence; a sound of fury and frustration intermingling. She cast around for a brief moment before her hand closed on the slender blade which was swiftly strapped to her leg, a movement made by deft, unthinking, practiced fingers. 

The airlock hissed before her, the doors parting far too slowly. She stalked back and forth before them, gnashing her teeth, making incomprehensable utterances to relieve at least some of her aggrivation. Her hands clenched and tensed in twitches. Her silver eyes glowed with her vengeful anger. 

Impatience got the better of her; as soon as there ws enough room between the slowly parting doors, she darted between them, the cold, toothed metal leaving a chill caress upon her shoulder and back. She darted past the docking guards, ignoring their calls, moving in hurried bounds through the milling herd of humans that pressed all about her in the corridors and then out in the streets. Their lowing calls to one another through the cool evening air covered the sounds of her snarling passage. 

The startled face of the Psi burned before Spook's cold eyes. _I am coming. I will find you. I will rip your beating heart out before those pale eyes of yours._ The snarl slipped into a vicious smile. The few who looked at her parted before her, their faces showing alarm. She didn't even notice them. 

She had her scent, and she followed it; nothing else mattered. She needed to find the bitch; the Corps had found them, and that would be remedied. 

"You will not take him," she growled, "You will not have us." 

Her vision darkened. She could feel the Psi; the scent she followed was panicked. She could hear only her own blood; the staccato baseline drowned out all of life. Her hands clenched again. 

She stopped, breathing with explosive snarls. 

One last obstacle. Just a door blocking her step. She knew her quarry was holed up on the other side. She battered at the others shielded mind, ripping the protective layers away even as she wrenched the lock with her shiv. 

The other stood as she entered. Her blue eyes showed startled surprise, a lack of composure that was promptly replaced with the trained aloof of the Corps. Their eyes locked, calm meeting the raging storm. 

"Ah. So you did come. I was afraid that you would run again, and after I had spent so long hunting you." The other had a voice that dripped of the finer things; her voice was melodious and honeyed, quiet but intoned to carry to the other. 

"'We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.'" 

"Ah, Jung. So you are an educated woman. Such a shame that you made such poor decisions. Our superiors so hoped to be able to salvage you." The woman gave out a small sigh, still meeting the narrowed silver eyes with caution. "And then to cast your lot in with that..." she gave a derisive snort and a wave of her hand. "At any rate, I am afraid I have my orders. Such a shame. Your file hinted that you would be much more difficult. Appearantly the time served in the penitentiary has addled your once formidable mind, miss Ivanova." 

"No. You found the wrong Psi. Kiran Ivanova is dead. She died at my hand in that pit of hell your superiors placed her in. Such a shame, too. She was a light in the darkness; innocent and naive." Shined eyes narrowed even further. The air crackled around the pair. Cold blue met icy silver, neither willing to turn away. It felt to Spook like standing in a lightening storm, with the air dancing in burning shivvers over her skin. The blows were intense, heavy and piercing, but neither person moved. 

The uniformed Psi leaned towards the raggedly dressed girl, her eyes finding a spark of heat. She raised her hands, her mouth a thin line, eyes wide. 

But the other simply raised her chin like a wild horse surveying the horizon, shoulders squared, face cold. 

And she took a step towards the uniformed woman. 

It felt to Spook as though her hair should be whipping about her face, clothes billowing in a raging wind. In many ways, the stillness that surrounded her was more disconcerting and fearsome. The battery she was feeling seemed somehow like it was imaginary, like she would blink and the mental soreness and fatigue would all vanish. She could smell the sharp tang of the other's sweat. The Psi was clenching her jaw as she exherted. Spook took another laborious step forward. 

It felt like she was watching the exchange in a dream. The blows against her mind felt muffled. The exhersion it took to stay standing wasn't to be believed. Each step was wrenching in the effort it took to make it. 

But make it she did, moving ever closer to the paling Psi. 

She blinked her silver eyes. There was a familiar weight in her hand, cool and slim, and the movement that came next was calming, nearly effortless, an instinctive, quick, hissing movement. She opened her eyes to stare deeply into the startled blue of her enemy. The warmth began its familiar flow over her skin, ebbing from the now gasping Psi onto Spook's hand where it touched her belly, still closed on the hilt of the long cool blade. 

She leaned in, her breath caressing the woman's cheek, a cheek paling to the faint blueish ashen colour that was so familiar, the light of it shimmering to a dull tone in the Shine. 

"'Into the jaws of Death,'" she murmured. "You will not take us back." 


	46. Chapter FortySix

Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. 

The glowing hues shown by the shine were fading, washing out a little as the gasping face so close to Spook's lost it's colour. She stared down into the startled eyes, already misting, with mild curiosity and something akin to tenderness. her mouth was set in a hard line but her eyes glistened with a brimming sadness. The dying Psi gasped. 

"'There are no facts, only interpretations.' You interpreted your data to mean that I would come easily, or fall beneath your mind. I told you, you would not take him, and I will never be shut away in the dark again." The shiv slid easily out of her, followed by another soft rush of blood to stain both pale hand and ragged shirt before Spook laid the woman upon the floor. Spook looked at the slender blade in her hand, watching the dark stain ooze sluggishly accross the gleaming surface. "You shouldn't have come. The Corps should have written us off long ago. Then you wouldn't have had to face me, and Kiran and you might both have survived. But you hunted a ghost. And now you are one." 

A shadow fell over them, broad and cold. she turned her head to catch the cold stare of Riddick friom the corner of her gleaming eye. He stood a few feed behind her, head tilted to one side, dark-lensed goggles hiding his eyes, his face showing nothing, hands behind his back. She turned her attention back to the fallen woman again. 

"She would have betrayed us." Her voice sounded so far away when she spoke; she almost didn't recognise it as her own. There was a sudden sharp coldness, a swift plunge of searing heat and icy fear in her back. She felt the large arm surround her, pulling her close. His breath lightly teased her cheek, sending her hair in a small wave against her temple. 

" 'The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.' I saw the signal, rabbit. And there's a ship coming for me." 

"Riddick-I-" She stared at him, turning slowly. She couldn't feel her legs, and she clung to his shoulders. 

He pulled the curved blade of the shiv from her back. With his bloodied hand he brushed her hair away from her wide eyes. 

"'People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.'" He bent his head to touch his lips to hers. 


	47. Epilogue

_Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black. _

I want to extend my thanks to all who have read Spook, and to all who took the time to tell me what they thought of it. I would also like to formally thank Charis, my esteemed Beta for hitting me upside the head whenever I contemplated doing something stupid with the story. 

A particular click, icy cold, metal against metal, echoed through the small room. 

"Well, much as I hate to interrupt such a tender moment..." The drawl smirked, the scent of ozone wafting with it towards where Riddick stood, the limp form of the pale, mousy haired girl still in his arms. "Put her down. Shiv with her. You're an animal, you know that?" 

The silver eyes stared blankly, shocked, up at the huge man. His hands were gentle as he carefully set the girl on the ground. He spared another moment to brush her hair away from her face. 

"Looks like another one you'll be doing time for. Stand up. Slowly! You're worth a shitload to me. Hands behind you." The merc approached. "Too bad you didn't make sure I was dead. Maybe you'd still be runnin' out there." Riddick felt the cold metal touch his skin, felt the crackle of the barrel near his spine. "Sad, really. That little one didn't send the signal." The restraints clicked into place on Riddick's wrists. "The Psi did." 


	48. References and Quotes

**_The References of Spook_**

In Chapter 2 you see Spook's books. The Art of War was written by Sun Tsu. The Oddessy was written by Homer. Beyond Good and Evil was written by Friedrich Nietzsche. 

In Chapter 8: 'Terrible experiences pose the riddle weather the person who has them is not terrible.' 'One has to repay good and ill -- but why precisely to the person who has done us good or ill?' Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

In Chapter 11 Peter and Wendy is mentioned. It was written by J.M. Barrie. 

In Chapter 13 Ridick reads a section of Byron's _"The Corsair"_

In Chapter 14:   
'Supposing truth is a woman'   
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

In Chapter 18:   
'Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice.'   
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

In Chapter 24   
Spook quotes a section of "Book of Golden Stories," a song by Runrig. 

In Chapter 35   
'What of the hunting, hunter bold?   
Brother, the watch was long and cold.'   
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

In Chapter 41 : In the press that Riddick is listening to there is reference to an Atreides station. Atreides is the   
creation of Frank Herbert for his Dune

In Chapter 43: Spook makes reference to thinking that "the abyss is finally gazing back." that is a reference to   
'And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'   
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil   
'People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought   
its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.'   
Nietzsche   
'It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.'   
Nietzsche, Thus Sopke Zarathustra, Pt. II, The Stillest Hour 

In Chapter 44   
'Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations - always darker, emptier, simpler than these.'   
Nietzsche, unknown source. 

In Chapter 45   
'We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.'   
Carl Jung, unknown source.   
'Into the jaws of Death'   
Lord Alfred Tennyson, _The Charge of the Light Brigade,_ stanza 3. 

In Chapter 46:   
'There are no facts, only interpretations.'   
Nietzsche, unknown source   
'The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.'   
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo   
'People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.   
Nietzsche, unknown source 


End file.
